


Devil, Tower, Star

by Im_All_Teeth



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, Blood, Blood Magic, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Character Death, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Dark Fantasy, Dark Magic, Eventual Romance, F/M, Fantasy, Female Protagonist, Gore, Healers, Healing, Horror, Long, Magic, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Monsters, Mystery, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Original Character(s), Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Horror, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Redemption, Romance, Sad, Secrets, Slow Burn, Strong Female Characters, Thriller, Torture, Tragedy, Trauma, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-21 08:21:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 61,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15553578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Im_All_Teeth/pseuds/Im_All_Teeth
Summary: Hermione would do almost anything to win the war against Voldemort, but after reading a book confiscated from the Malfoy estate, she begins to see that there is a price to pay for the magical and brutal help that she receives. Draco Malfoy, proper heir to the terrible magic and badly broken by war himself, is the only one who seems to have any idea of what is haunting her.





	1. The Cleverest Witch

**Author's Note:**

> Really quick: This is rated M for good reasons. I'll throw up a TW if anything gets graphically violent or sexual in a chapter (spoiler, it's mostly going to be violent). If you are interested in the story but are not comfortable with reading these things, send me a message or leave a comment and I will send you an abridged version of the chapter you'd rather skip.
> 
> I'm only posting this because I love comments.
> 
> "A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead."
> 
> Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
> 
> Part 1: The Devil

****

****

* * *

**Sunday, September 1st. Morning.**

War is not an every-day event. At least not the way that they are doing it.

Sometimes, she thinks war is a storm, like a tornado or a hurricane, because it is enormous and destructive but also there-and-gone, sudden and quick and painful. Lightning, maybe. A landslide. Sometimes, war is a fire, because it consumes whatever it touches and, in life's great unfairness, chooses what it takes at random. She cannot fathom the destruction of it most of the time. She thinks about countless bodies piled to an uncaring sky and wood splintering across innumerable continents.

War, it turns out, is nothing like it is in books.

War doesn't communally and evenly destroy everything. Once, on a battlefield, she fell face first into a bush of perfect roses and she was the first one to either notice them or wreck them, despite the blood soaking the dirt around them. Nothing, save for her face crashing into them, damaged the roses in any way.

Hermione Granger is not unharmed. In the last battle (the one with the roses), she froze with her wand in the air and a spell on her lips, unsure if she could cast a killing curse. The only thing running through her mind was  _who am I to decide who lives and who dies?_ And she didn't have an answer. The Death Eater she was facing took the chance her momentary indecision gave and blasted her off her feet and fifteen feet away (into that rose bush). The blood that soaked into the rose bush's roots was hers. She's spent the last two weeks kicking herself over it.

She is still technically a patient at St. Mungo's where she has been since her most recent in-battle fuck-up. They've decided—Kingsley and the others—that she is more a liability than an asset in a fight in her current state, but she still needs to feel useful. So she has been released with a keeper to the ministry, where she is to go through everything they've confiscated from Death Eater estates and look for anything useful in the fight. She is putting her massive intellect to use, they tell her, and she repeats that phrase over and over again to herself as if they are a prayer. As if repetition will make her pride sting any less.

Brightest witch of her age and she is a panicked idiot in a fight.

The ministry has an entire floor full of dark objects, and the auror who is acting as her keeper today holds the door open to one of the warded and locked rooms, motioning for her to go in first while he locks the door behind them. The room itself is so big the walls are lost in darkness and the ceiling vaults into obscurity, but somehow it still seems cluttered. There are mountains of jewelry she isn't allowed to touch with bare hands and mirrors covered in thick, dark sheets. Boxes are piled on top of trunks, packages perilously perched on the tops of dressers, and wardobes so tall she could not possibly reach the top of them even if she stood on the auror's shoulders and stretched as high as she could. There are books stacked like towers, clustered together and looking like small cities, labeled by where they came from and when:  _Lestrange Estate, October 1982. Thornwood Manor, July 1990. Black Townhouse, October - December 1985._

She decides to begin her research with the dark arts books because reading about dark magic isn't as dangerous as touching dark objects. Maybe she'll find something that will help her go sort through the rest of the magical objects in this room. She isn't sure she'll be allowed to take anything more dangerous than a bookmark back to St. Mungo's when her hour is up, anyway. Besides, reading is something that she has always done well, even when she can't do anything else.

She runs her fingers over a stack of spines, tracing titles and bindings, trying to decide which ones to read first when a dark red cover snags her interest and gives her pause. It is halfway down a stack labeled  _Malfoy Manor_ ,  _May 1995_. She does some mental math. Seized from the Malfoy estate after Lucius Malfoy was sent to Azkaban when they battled in the department of mysteries just over two years ago, only a few floors below where she is standing now. She grins to herself as she imagines what any of those pureblooded bigots would say if they saw her muggleborn hands all over their precious belongings.

The cover is the color of dark wine and reminds her of the Gryffindor common room. It is smooth, well-oiled leather and not so thick that she has difficulty pulling it out of the stack, but not so thin that it feels weightless in her hands when she examines it. It is perfect. It is where she will start. She puts it into her bag.

She has just enough time to collect three other books before they floo back to St. Mungo's where she will remain until someone can figure out how to close the X-shaped gash across her back, even though she has championed for her own release, saying it hasn't hurt for days and the beds are needed for the really sick and injured, but no one listens.

* * *

**Sunday, September 1st. Night.**

She still dreams about that battle—the one that's landed her in the hospital while her friends are out there. When she recalls it, though, it comes in fragments, like a shattered stained-glass window with no light behind it. When the spell catches her, she is sure that she has been cut in half, split into pieces from the pain. She's flying and then falling, and then she's looking upside down at a mostly-intact rosebush. It's her blood at its roots. She screams and suddenly Harry is there with her. His eyes, green like a cat's, wide and afraid, are the last things she sees before she passes out from the pain. She generally wakes up screaming and clawing at the agony shooting through her whole body as the cuts on her back bleed through the gauze.

This is, in fact, exactly what has just happened. The healer, finally done changing her bandages, has bustled out. Hermione is waiting for the Dreamless Sleep potion to take effect, but she is fighting to stay awake because, even though she knows it's useless, she doesn't want to dream anymore. She just can't seem to shut her brain off on command anymore. She's scared of the nightmares, which come even with the potion pumping through her body. She tries to focus on happier memories, hoping it will translate to happier dreams.

She thinks about Bill and Fleur's wedding, where she danced with Victor and with Ron until her feet ached and then fell asleep giggling with Ginny about the way Harry had stared at her all night long. When she thinks about it, she is still surprised that this was the same night that Kingsley became minister of magic . Scrimgeour was caught unawares by a pack of Death Eaters and was killed by Voldemort himself. That was a month ago. Two weeks after that, she was split open. All of it seems so long ago. Summer is ending. The days are getting shorter. Hermione Granger is stuck in a hospital bed, eyelids growing heavy, while a war is just starting all around the country.

* * *

**Monday, September 2nd. Afternoon.**

The healer finally leaves and so she pulls her bag off of the bedside table and rummages until she finds the book she has been wanting to read since yesterday.

She examines the cover of the book first. This is how she has always done it—for as long as she can remember, anyway—she runs her right index finger up the spine, turns the book in her hands, examining the front cover and then the back, inhaling deeply the smells of cut paper and ink.

This book is, as she first surmised, perfectly smooth, red-stained leather. There is no title on the spine or front cover, and the only blemish on the front is a small constellation of what are probably freckles from the original animal. The corners are sharp, and so the book must not be very old. Either that, or it is very well preserved with a book-keeping spell that she really ought to learn. She flips the book into her left hand, wincing slightly as the shift in pressure upsets the scabbing along her spine. The wound is freshly covered in several new salves that are supposed to help, but have so far only succeeded making the entire room stink like camphor and cow manure.

The book's back cover is as red and perfect as the front cover, but there is a puckering—a flaw in the leather, maybe—in the right corner. She squints at it. It looks like a bullseye, round, a dark circle and a slightly lighter halo around it, feathered at the edges. She runs her finger over it. It is only slightly raised, like someone tried to flatten it out but was unsuccessful in completely ironing it out of the material. It looks familiar to her, although she can't place why, and it takes her a moment to piece it together.

When she does, she drops the book onto the bed with a scream that she traps between her lips.

It is a nipple. A round, flattened nipple. She has been running her hands lovingly up and down a dark book bound in human skin.

She wants, suddenly, to wash her hands and to never see this book again but, as she learned days ago, whenever she gets out of bed the healer on duty comes running to see if she needs help, and so instead she just takes a deep breath and reminds herself that she has seen bodies before and maybe  _not_  panicking this time will keep more bodies from piling up. She knew it was a dark book from the start. She shouldn't be surprised, or feel quite so betrayed by it. So she swallows her fear and picks the book up off of the bed, opens it to the first page, and tries not to inhale deeply the scents of human-leather and old parchment and when she inhales anyway, she pretends the scent of parchment isn't so comforting.

The first page is blank and so is the second page save for five words written in a faded slanted script in the bottom right corner. They are so tiny that she squints and had to bring her face so close to the page that all she can smell is leather before she can read it.

_for wars you cannot lose_

She swallows tightly, but there is no magic in the words themselves and so she feels braver. All spells must be spoken, she knows, and so there is no harm in just reading.

She turns the page.

The third page is blank, but the fourth page is plastered with a strange jumble of Latin, Greek and Nordic runes. She knows some of the words, but has to rummage in her bag for a self-inking quill, a fresh sheet of parchment, and her Advanced Runes dictionary for the majority of them. She runs the feather across her lips as she reads. It finally feels like she's got a puzzle to solve, and the feeling is so comforting she leans into it and allows herself to be lost in the project, just the way she'd lose herself in homework while she was at school. She turns the page, jots down a translation, picks up her Runes dictionary, and continues well through the afternoon.

She stops, finally, shoving everything back into her bag and pretending to read something else when she hears the healer bustling next door with a tray. It isn't against the rules to read books in bed, and it isn't like there's anything else for her to do, but for some reason, she feels like she ought to keep the book a secret, even though her trips to and from the ministry are anything but. She tells herself that it's only because the book could be dangerous. What other reason could there be?

By the next morning, she has read the entire book, cover to cover, and she is still confused. The pages are a mess of different handwritings, like it was written by dozens of different people, in some places only writing one or two letters each. What pages aren't a mess of crimes against calligraphy are littered with diagrams she can't puzzle out—well, except for one, which looked like a series of tetragrams inside of a circle and peppered with runes with the words IN YOUR BLOOD written underneath in what Hermione is willing to bet is dried, brown blood, although the shape itself is in black ink.

From the way the words and sentences and shapes spill from one page to another, she suspects the whole book is one long spell, but she had no more of a clue what it was for than she had when she started it.

There are aspects of its wandwork and articulation that remind her of dozens of other spells she has learned over the years, but it isn't like anything she's ever seen. Naturally, she suspects it is a very complicated dark curse, so she isn't going to say it out loud or even copy down any of the sigils for reference. She wonders, briefly, if it is to make something like a horcrux, but nowhere does it call for any sacrifice beyond a bit of her own blood, so it can't be as bad as that.

Suddenly, it dawns on her that she is absolutely exhausted and she falls back against her pillows with a sigh, completely unperturbed by the papers, quills, and books spread around her like a strange and jagged quilt.

* * *

**Tuesday, September 3rd. Afternoon.**

She dreams of a dark shadow and, in her dream, she is reciting a spell perfectly, her mouth forming sounds she has never heard before but knows anyway.

"Miss Granger. Miss Granger."

Hermione jerks awake with a startled cry to see her main healer gently moving her parchments and books off of her bed and onto the bedside table.

"Sorry," she mumbles, rubbing the back of her hand across her eyes to clear them. "Good morning."

"It's afternoon, Miss Granger," the healer says, and gives her a gentle smile.

"Oh." Then she remembers she was up all night. "Sorry," she repeats.

The healer laughs and begins to lower her blankets. Hermione, who knows that it is time to check on her injuries, is already rolling over.

"I'm just sorry I had to wake you," the healer says. "It seemed like you were having a nice dream."

Hermione, who cannot remember dreaming about anything at all, knits her brows in confusion, although it is impossible for the healer to see the expression now that Hermione is laying on her stomach. So Hermione vocalizes her confusion with, "what makes you say that?"

"You were talking in your sleep. Where did you learn Greek? Your pronunciation is excellent."

She doesn't know how to answer because she doesn't know Greek, apart from what she learned when she was at Hogwarts, but it doesn't matter because the healer clicks her tongue and lifts Hermione's robe further up along her spine. The air is cold and she can feel goosepimples rising along the ridge of her exposed backbone and down the lengths of her legs.

"How does this feel Miss Granger?"

There are cool fingers pressed across the top of her back. "It twinges a bit," she says, "but it's really fine, actually." She turns her head, but all she can see is the lifted edge of her robe hanging between her vision and the rest of her body.

"It looks fine, too."

Hermione takes a moment to absorb this information. "What do you mean?" She is too smart to believe that she is SUDDENLY BETTER because even magic isn't good enough for curses like the one she took.

"I'll need to get Healer MacAulay in here to look at this."

* * *

**Thursday, September 5th. Evening.**

Hermione is released two days later, and she is feeling better than she has felt in months, even though she still isn't sleeping well. It's like there is a fire in her that she hasn't known since this all started, or even before that, if she thinks about it.

She raises her chin like a queen as she walks out of St. Mungo's sandwiched between four aurors she doesn't know and one she doesn't recognize but knows has to be Harry in Polyjuice potion. The flashing of cameras, journalists vying for the EXCLUSIVE STORY! from Hermione Granger, Harry Potter's brilliant (to quote the lying quill of Rita Skeeter) "On and Off Love Interest." Three days ago, this might have overwhelmed her, but now it doesn't even feel like a challenge.

Today, her bones must be made of steel. She could eat the whole world raw right now. Her hands, she is sure, could snap lightning at any minute. She might live forever in a glory like this. She might never have been alive before this at all. She stares ownership into the cameras and she is not afraid. Not of the flashing lights. Not of what the papers will write. Not of Death Eaters. Not of anything.

* * *

**Monday, September 9th. Evening.**

The next three books she reads, while Mrs. Weasley stuffs her with food and love and welcome comfort, aren't nearly as interesting as the first one was. One is about a ghastly dark wizard in the sixteenth century who mastered the art of turning people inside out before eventually turning his wand on himself, proving that one can indeed turn oneself inside out. The spell ostensibly died with the wizard (and certainly wasn't recorded in this particular tome), which Hermione doesn't see as any real loss. The next book is just a litany of Malfoys through the ages and after three chapters of "...and Cassius and Persephone Malfoy begot Abraxes Malfoy on the First of October in the year…" it takes all of her willpower not to chuck it into the fireplace.

The last book is a potions book, and she finds several potentially useful potions she copied down onto separate parchment and passed to Kingsley, who makes time in his busy schedule to attend the "Hermione is Out of Mungo's" banquet that Molly Weasley has prepared.

"This is good work, Hermione," he says, shuffling the pages in his hands. They are in one of the upstairs bedrooms, away from the sounds of the party. "Impressive."

"Thank you, sir," she replies, holding her head a little bit higher. There. She is worth it. She is helping. It doesn't matter that she isn't fighting. She is making her mark. She is helping the cause.

"Hermione, are you in here?" Ron opens the door without knocking but has the decency to look sheepishly between Hermione and the Minister of Magic once he realizes that he is intruding. "Sorry," he mumbles, his ears turning red. "Should I go?"

"No, Ron." The parchment, Hermione realizes, has already been slipped out of sight and Kingsley runs a tired hand over his face. "Congratulations again on your recovery, Hermione." He claps her on the shoulder. "I should be getting back to work. I only dropped in to see how you were doing."

She lets out a long breath through her nose as Kingsley pushes past Ron, who waits for her in the doorway, still looking apprehensive. She and Ron trump down the stairs shoulder-to-shoulder, but not quite touching, and not speaking at all. They are nothing more that friends now, and that is as much her doing as it is his. The "relationship," if it could even be called that, consisted of a string of awkward kisses and even more awkward silences. There's a soft insecurity to Ron that she can love as a friend but can't stand as a lover. They function best as friends. She is not bitter and she doesn't think he is, either, but it's only been a month and a half since they agreed to go back to "just friends" and neither is sure where to draw the lines anymore. This is what happens, she supposes, when you spend two years half in love with your best friend only to realize that half in love is nowhere near close enough to fully in love. It felt too much like trying to kiss a brother.

When they reach the party, Hermione walks gratefully toward Ginny while Ron, heading in the opposite direction, takes shelter with Harry and the twins.

After the party, Ron floos with her to Grimmauld place and brings her trunk up to her room while she lets Crookshanks out of his carrier and then sits heavily in an armchair by the fireplace. Harry didn't come with them, and Ron doesn't seem to want to spend too much time in awkward silence with her, and so he excuses himself.

She curls in her chair with a book and before long, Crookshanks hops into her lap to function as a warm weight wedged against her side. She is reading one of her new books, but her mind is wandering like a dog that always goes back to where its family used to live.

It probably isn't healthy to think about a single spell so much, but she can't seem to stop herself. She dreams about it every night and lingers on it during daylight hours. This is, of course, only because it was such a disturbing thing to read, and now it sits like a bitter secret in her mouth, waiting to come out. But it isn't a secret; at least not one that she keeps on purpose—she has tried, at least once a day since she got out of St. Mungo's to tell Harry or even Ron about it, but whenever she brings it up, something urgent and pressing happens or someone calls or something bangs loudly in the other room and there never seems to be a chance to get the words out.

* * *

**Tuesday, September 10th. Evening.**

Harry comes back bleeding and slumps at the kitchen table.

"It's nothing, Hermione," he calls, cleaning blood off of his glasses, as she races around the kitchen for  _dittany, dittany it was just here_ ,  _where did it go?_  "I'm really fine. Really."

But she doesn't listen. She holds his head back and droppers the foul-smelling potion into the gash across his forehead and thanks whatever god or gods there might be that it is working. When she is done, the only scar on his face is the one that has always been there; the one that has marked him like a holy thumbprint for this war. She would erase that one, too, if she could.

"What happened?" she asks when she has cleared all the blood from the fireplace and door knobs and scrubbed wooden table.

"Malfoy."

The surprise must show on her face because Harry amends, "Lucius Malfoy."

Of course it was Lucius. Hermione was a fool to even wonder. Draco Malfoy hasn't been seen for over a month; not since he helped Luna Lovegood and Hannah Abbott escape from the dungeons at Malfoy Manor in August. Not, of course, that it did much good. Dolohov had caught up to them before they even reached the woods at the edge of the estate, but Hannah managed to get to the apparition point and back to a safe house. She choked out the story of the would-be escape around blood before dying in Hermione's shaking arms. In retrospect, Hermione isn't too surprised by the result, even though admitting it makes her skin crawl and her mouth taste bitter. Luna and Hannah were never made for war. Malfoy's actions, on the other hand, surprised her at the time and still surprise her now. She imagines he was made of mercury. He slipped through the nails when she had him pinned for dissection; not liquid or solid, but certainly dangerous. But he is probably dead now, so it doesn't matter that she never figured him out.

"He sent a  _sectumsempra_  at me. I blocked it, mostly." Harry grins sheepishly and ducks his head a bit. In the month since Draco disappeared, Lucius has become one of the most ruthless fighters.

Hermione wrinkles her nose, "You need to be quicker with that, Harry.  _Mostly_  is still too close," she chides, even though they both know that she has no room to talk, given her track record.

Maybe this, though, is why he doesn't argue with her. He ducks his head again and runs his fingers through his hair.

"Yeah," he says, "I know."

* * *

**Tuesday, September 17th. Afternoon.**

Hermione sits in one place and chews her nails to the fingertips whenever Harry leaves the house.

Every time he goes out, she is positive that this will be the last time she will see him, and it kills her to watch the front door close and to not be able to follow. As long as she has known Harry James Potter, she has followed him into danger. If she goes, she will be worse than useless. She refuses to be just another fear distracting him in a fight.

To keep from going insane, she takes trips to and from the Ministry to get new books to read and then she reads the books. In the last week, she has read more books about dark curses than were probably even in the library at Hogwarts. She has learned quite a lot and some of it has already proved to be useful. She is the smartest witch of her age, and her work reflects this.

Hermione Granger is cleverness and books, but she is also bravery and friendship—at least she likes to think that she is —and she is sure that she is going mad waiting for Harry to come home. Every time he leaves, she  _knows_  that today is the last day and it will be Kingsley or McGonagall who will come back with a pale face and wide, sad eyes. She should get a medal for sitting in this old, angry house for a whole week. The spell from that book is a song stuck in her head, and this is part of the reason she thinks she is going crazy. Maybe she should try telling Harry about this again when he comes back.

What she actually says to Harry when he slumps through the front door and flops onto the couch opposite her chair, boots and all, is: "I'm reading a very compelling book right now."

The book she is talking about is currently in her lap, closed around her finger to mark the page and to keep Harry from noticing that she's got a band-aid over her fingertip where she chewed it down too far.

"Oh yeah?" he answers mechanically, "That's great, Hermione." Mud flakes off the tip of his boot and onto the carpet. Kreacher will have a fit when he gets back from Bill and Fleur's, where Harry has asked him to help the young couple settle in.

She raises her eyebrows. His eyes are closed. "It's about Flobberworms."

"Fascinating."

"And blast-ended-skrewt mating patterns."

"Wow."

"It gets very graphic."

"That's great, Hermione."

"And then Kingsley stopped by."

"Fascinating."

"He proposed."

"Wow."

"I joined a quidditch team today. I'm now the keeper for the Hollyhead Harpies."

Harry opens his eyes and looks at her. "You were reading about the Harpies? Why?"

She rolls her eyes. "Oh, Harry, just go to bed if you're too tired to talk to me."

"Sorry," he rubs his eyes and when he pulls his hands away from his face, his glasses are crooked. "It's just been a long day."

She stands and Crookshanks jumps nimbly to the floor and pads out of the room. "Come on," she sighs, depositing her book on the chair and walking over to where Harry is still slumped. She straightens his glasses in a gesture that is so familiar she doesn't even notice she is doing it. "I'll make us some tea and you can tell me all about what happened."

* * *

**Thursday, September 19th. Night.**

It takes until Friday for her to finally snap and sneak out to a battle. Like most little wars fought in shadows and side streets, this fight was not planned and she only learns about it when Bill sends a patronus for Harry, asking for backup. She might not have apparated at all if Harry had been there, but he was out hunting horcruxes with Ron (something  _else_ she isn't allowed to do anymore, never mind that she knows more about camping than either of them), following a lead cobbled together from pilfered Death Eater memories and that strange connection Harry has with Voldemort.

She couldn't let a battle be lost because the boys were off doing something else and Harry would never forgive himself if people died and he wasn't there, so Hermione goes instead. She turns on the spot and then she is in Godric's Hollow, whirling sideways as a firework of yellow light shoots past her ear close enough that she can smell her hair burning.

Her heart hammers like a war drum in her chest and she is not afraid. She was born for war and while still turning, she fires a  _stupefy_  in the direction the  _crucio_  came from, but there is something wicked railing in her brain. Why isn't she using harsher magic? There is a curse on her tongue that she knows will turn the war in her favor. It's right there on the back of her mouth like a fat toad, ready to leave. The other side will not hesitate to use unforgivables so why shouldn't she? And she has something even better than anything they might know.

But  _no_ —she is not like the Death Eaters. She is Hermione Granger, and wherever that thick line has been drawn between good and evil, she is firmly on one side and they are on the other. She does not use unforgivable curses because she is not a murderer or an unforgivable person. War is not a means to prove herself a wicked beast. She knows already what kind of monsters war creates and she will not be a casualty in a moral or physical sense. She will survive and she will do it with her hands clean. And she isn't stupid enough to test out a spell she doesn't understand in a situation like this.

They win the battle and she only knows when she finds herself, panting for breath, caked in sweat and dust from shattered sidewalks, surrounded by cloaked figures all bearing the lightning-blue phoenix on the right shoulder like a little neon "DONT CURSE ME" sign. She has never been left after a battle before and so this is her first real victory. She doesn't know what she was expecting—a whooping cheer, maybe, like after a quidditch match—but all that happens is Bill gives her a shallow nod and the six or so who haven't already left for home or been portkeyed to St. Mungo's all approach the dark bodies on the ground, looking for signs of life while Robards and Dawlish keep their wands trained on the shadows.

"Let's get moving," growls Dawlish, "They're already dead, but the Death Eaters might return with backup any second."

"We don't know that they're all dead, sir," says a woman with short dark hair that Hermione hasn't seen before as the two of them turn a body over, but Dawlish either doesn't hear her or pretends not to.

The robed figure Hermione bends over is the first dead body Hermione has touched since she closed Hannah's eyes in the kitchen of the safe house and she tries not to think about the iron tang of blood that smothered her then and is smothering her now.

"He's still alive!" The woman calls, raising wide eyes and looking desperately around, "Gawain! Dawlish! He's alive!"

"Then stop shouting and get him to the hospital, Bulstrode! What are you waiting for—a personalized invitation?" Dawlish's eyes roll toward her but his wand remains trained on the space between two dark and broken buildings. There is a vein bulging in his neck and spit flies when he speaks.

Gawain Robards gives her a nod of dismissal. The girl bites her lip and disapparates with a crack like a whip. Hermione stands, wipes the blood from her hands onto the thighs of her jeans, and moves to the next body.

There are seven more bodies to check. One is a Death Eater who gets ennervated, stunned again, and taken to Azkaban by Dawlish. This surprises Hermione. She'd never thought before about what they would do with the Death Eaters who are left behind after a battle, but it only makes sense, really, to go directly to prison. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Another Death Eater is taken to St. Mungo's. She recognizes him as Stan Shunpike, and he goes with a two-auror escort and no wand. Another order member is taken to St. Mungo's shortly thereafter. Hermione recognizes him, too. She met him once in a safe house in Scotland and she remembers him ruddy-faced with a big laugh. He is now bleeding fiercely from a gash that takes up most of his left side and he is a light shade of blue, but still, miraculously, breathing. The other four are all corpses. Two Death Eaters Hermione doesn't really look at, Dedalus Diggle whose wrinkled face is frozen in a gash of pain or horror Hermione tries not to stare at for too long, and one body that is burned too badly to be identified as definitively human, let alone a known person, without the help of a good healer or coroner. Robards goes by portkey with all four bodies to the coroner's office of St. Mungo's. "I'll let them sort us out," he says before he leaves.

It is strange to think that Robards just had a portkey to a coroner on him, waiting to be activated, and Hermione wonders if he carries portkeys like that wherever he goes. She wonders how many bodies he's brought there himself.

"Thanks," Bill says, and suddenly Hermione realizes that they are the only two left, which is probably why no one is yelling for them to take cover or get out of there.

"No problem," she answers and is proud of how light the words sound. It is perfectly dark (if anyone is home, they are not turning on lights) and so she doubts Bill can see how bad her hair is or that she is already crying.

"You were the one who stunned Rowle, yeah?" he asks. He is half-a-house away from her, so she doesn't know what he looks like, but he sounds tired. His voice is all gravel from shouting spells for twenty minutes.

Still, she is startled. "Yes. How did you know?"

"You were the only one here tonight who still casts stunners. Anyway, good work. Best get home now, yeah? Dawlish was right; I don't know why they haven't come back yet."

* * *

**Saturday, September 21st. Night.**

There is a battle on Sunday and this time Harry and Hermione are asked for together. Pride lifts her bones and she holds her nose in the air all through the short argument she and Harry have over her attendance.

"You're not going, Hermione!" he hisses and there is power in his words, but she is not scared of him.

Instead, she draws herself up to her full height and jabs a finger into Harry's sternum. "Don't you dare tell me what to do, Harry James Potter. This is my war as much as it is yours and I will let you do all the fighting while I just sit around, reading books all day."

"But reading is useful," he tries, shoving her finger away, but it is back in an instant.

"They. Called. Me. Too. Harry," she huffs, jamming her finger into his chest to punctuate every word. "It's not just for you."

He gives her a look that says he is contemplating tying her to a chair before he leaves.

"Don't try to do this alone, Harry," she tries instead, knitting her eyebrows, "Until the very end, right?"

They hold hands and Harry apparates them both. He is better at apparating to a fight than she is. Instead of sending them into the heart of battle, he takes them just past the edge of the fighting. They can hear the boom and crash of spells snapping across trees but they cannot yet see the glow of the crossfire. It is suddenly just like last year at Hogwarts and all she can smell is pine and magic but she is not afraid now like she was then. There is a curse pounding in her head as she reminds herself of Bill's words from Friday, but she is sure that Harry will never let her out of his sight again if she curses anyone seriously and her track record isn't so good that she's willing to gamble with people's lives, so when Henry says "Together?" and they start running towards the fray, she has a stunning spell on her tongue, and not something worse. She will always wonder if this was the right decision.

It is immediately obvious that this is a different kind of fight. There are more spells than she has seen fired in one place since school. The colors burn trails across her retinas and although she knows that it would be smart to be afraid, the spell on her tongue makes her braver than she should be. Miraculously, the curses always seem to just miss her and her stunners always find their mark. Because she is so busy succeeding, she doesn't realize that they are losing until someone behind her calls "Go back! Get to the apparition points!" and someone to her left screams.

She turns her head just in time to see red hair disappear under a terrific beast made entirely out of green fire and she is running towards the fire-beast without even thinking about it- eight names fumbling against her brain and she is running without looking where she is going and she is running without anything in her mind besides  _I have to help Ihavetohelp Ihavetohelphelphelp_  and then she is yanked backwards with such force that she can feel the hairs tearing from her scalp in handfuls before she even hears herself scream, but there is a hand around her throat and a wand in her back and she is clawing and she is biting and there is a pull behind her navel and she screams Harry's name over and over again but it is cold and it is empty and she is alone and everything is so dark that it takes her breath away and, at last, she knows what fear is.


	2. In the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for gore.

* * *

**Saturday, September 21st.**

The first thing Hermione does after the snap of her captor leaving is fumble around blindly in the dark. She hunts desperately across the cold, slimy floor for her wand. She is on her hands and knees and she whimpers quietly when her scraped shins slide across rough stone.

She doesn't remember the Death Eater taking her wand, but she distinctly remembers clawing at him with both hands, which means that she must have dropped it when the Death Eater grabbed her. With a groan, she cradles her head in her hands. She calls herself a witch and yet she cannot hang onto her wand when it really counts.

A jagged sob rips through her chest and out of her mouth and she slams her fist against the stone floor. Her hand slicks off to one side and it is then that Hermione realizes two things: The first is that she must be underground, given the dankness and smell of rot on rocks around her. The second is that she is crying. Not in loud sobs, but the quiet snuffling tears that come with shaking shoulders and insurmountable fear. The stench of rot is so thick in the air that she can taste it on her tongue and she gags once, twice, and spits bile onto the floor.

"I'm sorry," she says out loud to no one in particular, but she knows in her head that she is speaking to Harry, the bravest boy she has ever known. He has walked into death more times than Hermione will ever be able to count, and he has been brave every time and here she is now, more afraid than she's ever been before. She is afraid of what will become of her here. She is afraid of who will come for her and she is so, so afraid of being tortured to death, which she knows is going to happen. Her breath comes in shorter and shorter gasps and she only notices this when fireworks of color begin to explode in her eyes and her thoughts become blips and start-stops. Like Morse Code, which she used to know fluently.

She is panicking and she knows it. She is twelve again and she is wrapped in Devil's Snare and it is choking her out and  _oh god she cannot breathe._ But there is Ron's voice in her head because it has always been Ron's voice that pulls her back into reality. Maybe that's why she thought she loved him.

_HAVE YOU GONE MAD?_

No. Yes. Maybe.

She doesn't know and why is Ron always  _yelling at her_  even in her own imagination. If he were here now, she'd have words with him about his attitude. She lets out a strangled, hysterical giggle at this thought, and this calms her somehow.

_ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT?_

Not without a wand.

No, that's stupid. She was a witch before she got her wand and she is still a witch now. So, yes. Definitely yes. She is a witch. She is a witch because Harry and Ron were her first real friends, apart from her mum and dad. She is a witch because magic is better than being special or different or "academically talented," and because there is something utterly satisfying about knowing that she is capable of creation and destruction like in the books she read when she was little.

Like the stories, only so much better and worse at the same time. Better, because magic is in the details; the small breathtaking things that she still notices, like Professor Flitwick's fireworks or watching a snitch's wings unfurl like the petals on a flower on fast-forward. Worse, too, because she never read about people getting captured and imprisoned in dark cells when one of their best friends might have been on fire.

_Oh, god! Ron!_  Thinking about it now, she is sure,  _sure_  that it was Ron disappearing under those jaws of flame. No. She is  _not_  sure. She has no true evidence that it was even a Weasely. It could have been anyone and the Weasleys are not the only family in England with red hair. There is, actually, a strangely high prevalence of magically-gifted gingers and she isn't really sure if that correlation necessarily implies anything, but the fact remains that it could have been anyone that was under that burning beast and they could still be fine.

She is manually slowing her breath now, counting to five before she exhales with a hand over her pounding heart like she is going to be able to contain it in her chest that way.

As the adrenaline is leaving her, a resigned fear settles into her bones.

She still cannot see anything. Her cell is the perfect black of outer space or a deep ocean floor. The air is close and stale and smells like mold, which means that the walls probably aren't too far away. There is a small voice in the back of her head that tells her to be afraid of moving, just in case there is a deep pit directly in front of her that she cannot see.  _But no_ , she reasons,  _the air would not feel so still if that were the case._  If there were anywhere for the musty air to go, it would be moving, but it isn't moving at all. Everything is completely still. It is cold like a cave, but not as cold as the autumn air had been in Scotland only minutes ago.

Still and stale as a tomb, but she tries not to think about that.

"Hello?" she calls, but it is as if the darkness swallows her words as soon as she utters them. Her voice is small and muted. "Can anyone hear me?"

There is no answer.

Giving up, she crawls forward blindly, running her hands across slime-slicked floors ahead of the rest of her body. After a few minutes of this, her fingers stumble over a different material. It is cloth and her heart stutters in her chest.

"Hello?" she says again, running her hands excitedly up the cloth, but as the rapid heartbeats pass and her fingers trace up the ridge of what feels like it might be a leg and there is no answer, fear like bile rises into her mouth.

There is something under the cloth now, she knows, but she doesn't know what. She presses her fingers along its surface and there is a swell that she touches gingerly. The flesh collapses like bad fruit under the gentle press of her fingertips and a fresh wave of rot wafts out toward her on the still air. Something wet seeps through the cloth and out over her fingertips before she can pull her hands back. She scuttles backward until her spine scrapes the far wall and she is retching and she no longer cares if she is being brave because she is trapped in a room with a dead body and she has dead body on her  _hands_. Her stomach might be trying to turn itself inside out. After some time, it gives up on expelling anything else and she curls up on her left side, clutching her knees to her chest.

Perhaps because she is exhausted or perhaps because there is nothing else to do in perfect darkness, she slips off to sleep.

* * *

When she wakes up, she has no idea how much time has passed. She stares into space without really knowing if her eyes are opened or closed anymore. The cell still smells like rot with an undertone of bile where she threw up her breakfast. She wishes fiercely that she hadn't thrown up. She's so hungry. Thirsty, too, and the palms of her hands are still sticky with adipocire. Her mouth tastes like acid and her teeth feel soft.

She was having that dream again, the one where she is casting a spell and there is a shadow watching her in the corner with infinite patience, waiting for her to finish. Cautiously, she considers what could possibly be the worst that could happen if she were to cast it. Assuming, of course, that it would even work without a wand. She's never bothered learning wandless magic, although right now she cannot fathom how she could be so lacking in foresight.

A tiny voice in the back of her mind reminds her that blood magic and a bunch of other old spells don't actually require wandwork since most of it was older than the introduction of the first wands in about 458 B.C. In fact, wands in England were even more recent than that and were only seriously introduced to the British Isles with Ollivander (a great ancestor of the maker of her own wand) who came in with the Romans sometime during the middle ages.

If she ever gets out of this, she is going to get better at nonverbal magic. And then she is going to learn wandless magic and this will never be an issue again. She was so stupid not to consider this beforehand. She kicks herself for not having more forethought, and with nothing but her own discomfort to distract her, her self-reprobation lingers much longer than it ought to, and settles on her like a suffocating mass.

Hunger and thirst are twin angry weights in her stomach, but she inhales deeply over the body and the gnawing hunger is replaced by nausea. The thirst remains.

* * *

After another sleep-wake cycle, Hermione is so thirsty that she licks the walls of her cell. They taste like salt and rot, but she is too relieved to feel something slick and wet on her tongue to care about the taste.

* * *

She takes three deep breaths and pulls her jumper around her nose and mouth before crouching down beside the body. The skin seems to alternately shrink and split under her fingers, but she continues to probe through the robes, looking for pockets.  _Please let there be one. Please oh please_. But she can't hold her breath for that long and she is forced to step back, to take deep breaths and to wipe the sticky, stinking viscera onto the legs of her already filthy jeans before steeling herself for another round. She plunges her hands back into the robes, finds a pocket. Empty. And another. Also empty. Hope flutters between her ribs for a moment when her fingers close around something hard and she yanks it out into both of her hands, which are shaking now.

It is not a wand.

She runs her hands over the points, the sharp-smooth facets before collapsing against the wall beside the body, crying tears of frustration. It is a rock. She is angry that the body has nothing even remotely useful, and she is angry with herself for crying  _again_. Can't she think of anything more  _useful_  to do?

At least the sobs come without tears at this point. Her body is trying too hard to conserve what little water she's been able to lick off of the walls to waste it on something as useless as weeping. She raises her arm to toss the stone across the cell but hesitates. She lowers her arm and pockets the stone instead. Just in case.

She is eighteen years old.

She is in a war.

Anything, even a stupid rock, can be a weapon.

She wipes angrily at her dry eyes, willing her shoulders to stop shaking.

But days alone in complete darkness with only a corpse for company might make anyone cry, she reasons with herself, and perhaps it is not so bad to cry when there is no one to see it and no one but the dead to hear it.

* * *

She snaps awake, her breath caught in her chest.

At first, she isn't sure what prompted her sudden alertness, but just as she is contemplating going back to sleep, she realizes what it is: The air is moving. It is so subtle that, had she not been sitting in dead air for so long, she might not have noticed it at all, but she notices it now, and she gulps greedy breaths of fresh air even as her mind asks the inevitable question:  _Why?_

The fear that has dulled in her chest over the last few days sharpens to a diamond-point.

She stays curled toward the wall, but her hand slips into her pocket and closes around the sharp stone, warm from its proximity to her body. The edges of it press into her palm like a dull knife and this is comforting. She is not unarmed. Let history remember that when the Death Eaters came for Hermione Granger, she fought back. When Hannah Abbott returned to them to die in Hermione's arms, the coroner provided a detailed and chilling report of the damage her body had sustained. Hermione would rather go down fighting, all at once, than one piece at a time like Hannah.

Hinges scream as a door swings open somewhere and she can hear male voices somewhere above her and the air smells fresher, somehow, but dangerous in ways she would rather not consider. She clenches the stone harder and she can feel it cutting into her palm, warm blood welling where the point of it has broken skin.

An idea lights up the insides of her mind and her mouth and limbs are working before her brain has done more than have the thought. She is whispering in sharp Latin, the stone in gripped in her left hand as she drags it like a knife down across her right palm.

There are two pairs of feet tromping down distant stairs, but they pause as Hermione's voice raises to a shout. Warm blood drips down her fingers and she can hear it splat onto the ground. Without stopping to think or second-guess herself, she blindly smears the tetragram and circle with her still-bleeding hand onto the slimy stone, filling in runes where she guesses they might go. Magic like pins and needles staccatos across her shoulders and down her fingertips, where it seems to gather in the slice across her palm before slithering out of her along with her blood. A pounding begins behind her head and suddenly she is sure that she will explode from the pain of it, but as soon as it starts, it empties out of her. She gasps the final words of the incantation and slumps back, shaking with exhaustion.

The voices above her are closer now. She can hear someone trip-trip-tripping down a set of unseen stairs and she knows that they are coming for her and she knows, crushingly, that she has failed to save herself, and now she is too spent to even raise the stone against whoever comes.

There is a shifting behind her and, for one horrifying moment, she thinks that the body in the room has come to life again, and her mind flashes instantaneously to the zombies she has seen in movies or the Inferi that Voldemort commands. Then her eyes slide to the farthest corner from where she is and all the air is sucked from her lungs.

There is something there in the dark. It is impossibly large, and it seems to have a gravity of its own. Everything bends toward it. It pulls the oxygen and even the darkness from the air and although she cannot see it, she knows it is watching her with hungry, patient eyes.

"What's going on down there?" Demands a harsh voice with a snarling accent.

"Sounds like our girl's awake, doesn't it?" replies a second.  _They sound French,_  she thinks absently, and then,  _I'm going to die._ Whether by the beast in the darkness or the men on the stairs, this is the end of the line.

"I like it when they're awake," says the second man. His words are hungry.

The first chuckles darkly and responds, but Hermione cannot hear him over the shush of her own blood in her ears. Her heart is beating too loudly, she knows it, because the creature is raising one long-fingered hand toward her and then the fingers are stretching toward her and-

"Can't see nothing down here.  _Lumos!"_

The last thing Hermione sees before the light temporarily blinds her is the creature in the corner, turning its massive, blank face towards the voices. She blinks and her eyes start to adjust. It is not overpowering anymore. She can make out the outline of stairs through a window about six feet up in one of the walls, which she now figures must actually be a door. Her eyes snap back towards the corner to the creature, but there is nothing there. It is gone.

"What the—"

There is a sharp intake of breath and a series of sharp cracks, like twigs snapping followed by something splashing onto stone. The splash seems to last the longest because no sound comes after it.

Everything goes dark.

Hermione is too afraid to breathe in the silence that follows, but as the minutes stretch by, she begins to wonder if maybe she imagined it. Maybe none of this is real. Maybe she's finally gone mad down here in the dark.  _I hope they're all dead,_  she thinks hysterically.  _I hope they kill each other and forget all about me._

There is a scream in the silence. One long, endless scream muffled by walls and distance. Something crashes. There is a  _bang!_  of a spell firing and then another and another. The walls around her shake.

Then there is a silence that stretches on for so long Hermione realizes her legs are cramped from crouching on the floor. She shifts onto her bottom, flexing her toes. There is a tap, tap, tap down the flight of stairs, and the light returns, flooding fully into the cell. She licks her lips but cannot force herself to move.

The door swings open soundlessly, revealing a stone hallway. In the center of the hallway, laying flat on the damp flagstones, is a wand. The tip radiates the bright, golden light of a strong lumos but the wand is on the floor, untouched by any hand.

Slowly, Hermione rises from her position on the ground, takes one tentative step forward and then another. Then she feels it. Every hair on the back of her neck rises and fear trickles down her back in a cold stream. She doesn't have to look back to know that there are hungry eyes upon her, but she knows without knowing how she knows that it will not harm her. Not now, at least.

She bends down to pick up the wand, hesitating only for a moment, but when her fingers close around it, the spell ends and she is plunged back into darkness. Without sparing a second thought for whatever is in the shadows behind her, she turns on the spot, and disapparates.


	3. The Hood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for gore, body horror, and secondary character death.

**Thursday, September 26** **th** **.**

The room around her is a riot of noise and color. Red light fireworks across her vision.

" _Stupefy!"_  someone yells and she is frozen to the spot before she can even tell them  _It's Me! Hermione!_  and her eyes roll back into her head and she falls backward and the last thing she sees before blackness swallows her is the monster in the corner, and she watches her fall reflected in its pebble eyes, toppling, toppling, gone.

 _Enervate_!

She gasps in a breath and her eyes swing wildly from side to side. There is no monster. There is nothing in the shadows. Her heart hammers its fear in her ears.

"When we left Harry's Aunt's and Uncle's, what was the first thing you said once we were airborne?"

Hermione is still gasping, but she knows she isn't in the backyard of Grimmauld place anymore, where she meant to be. For a horrifying second, she thinks she's back in the black room, or maybe she never left at all, but there is wandlight all around her and Kingsley is shaking her shoulder so hard that her teeth rattle. She is pretty sure that she is in the wine cellar of Grimmauld Place, based on the smells of rot and rat droppings. She wants to vomit. She wants to scream. Her body can't decide which it would rather do first, so she does neither.

"Answer me!" Kingsley's voice is low but laced with menace she's never heard before. She sees him for the first time not as the gentle, genial minister of magic, but as an Auror with sure aim and a cold knowledge of how terrible the world can be.

"I-I-Hold on let me think. I think I said 'I was hoping I wouldn't have to ride one of these again.'"

Kingsley's hand drops from her shoulder, and he eyes search her face like she is a dog who might bite or a question he can't be sure he knows the answer to. She reaches into her back pocket for her wand, but, of course, it isn't there.

Kingsley stands, but fear and habit move her hands for her. They dart out and grab the sleeve of his robe. "Wait," she croaks. "What did you tell me when I gave you my notes on the book at the Burrow the other week?"

The Minister looks furious, and then he looks incredulous, and then he looks relieved. "This is good work, Hermione," he repeats, "Impressive."

She nods once and lets him go, slumping back against a wooden barrel.

He turns to the lights around them. "It's her. Go ahead."

Kingsley takes a step backwards, and all of a sudden she is swarmed by warm bodies and people are saying her name and they are talking all at once and she is so  _tired_  and so glad to be back that she just sits there and accepts all of the love that Harry, Ginny, Ron, and Mrs. Weasley are heaping on her and she lets out a broken, dry sob because she is just so  _happy_  to be where she is and suddenly everything else just feels like a bad dream.

* * *

"What happened to you, Hermione?" asks Kingsley. They are alone at the dark-stained dining room table. Mrs. Weasley has already chased Harry, Ron, and Ginny out of the dining room since the minister wanted to speak to her. Kreacher left an enormous plate of shepherd's pie in front of her before he bowed out too. The spoon hardly pauses between the plate and her mouth. She is so hungry. She had forgotten how wonderful food is. All food. Every food in the world is perfect and she loves eating  _so much_.

"One of the Death Eaters grabbed you, disapparated, and then no news for five days. We thought you were dead."

She relates the story of her capture and the body in the dark, dark cell as best as she can between mouthfuls.

"You should slow down if you haven't eaten in a few days," warns Kingsley, but he is too smart to try to take the plate away from her. He looks tired, she sees now, but she is too busy shoving food into her mouth to really care too much yet.

Other than this, he doesn't interrupt her until she finishes. "And then I came back here because I couldn't think of anywhere else to go and I was worried that someone would come to check on me again."

"But how did you get the wand, Hermione?"

She scrapes the plate with the spoon. Kreacher magics the plate off of the table. Hermione's attention is immediately on the elf, who appears soundlessly when she asks, "May I have more, please, Kreacher?" The minister waits patiently. The house elf bows so low that his long, drooping nose almost touches the floor and Regulus' locket dangles off of his thin, wrinkled neck as he hobbles back off to the kitchen. He wasn't wearing it when he left for Fleur and Bill's house. She wonders what has changed since she left. It doesn't feel like that long, but at the same time, it seems like suddenly everything is different.

"You said that there was a rock in the robes of the decomposing body and that you used 'the wand' to apparate back here. I don't quite understand what happened between those two steps, though. Was there a wand in the robes, too? Is that how you escaped?"

She returns her attention to Kingsley, who is staring intently at her. Like she is a puzzle or like he is meeting her for the first time. "What? No. That's silly. No. It was just a rock in the pocket," she pauses, winces as her stomach clenches suddenly, "But I used the rock to," she swallows heavily, "To do a," she can feel the shepherd's pie starting to claw its way back up her throat but she tries to hang onto it because she is still hungry and she is still afraid that there won't be food next time, "Spell. Got the wand," she chokes out before she doubles over in her seat and the shepherd's pie tumbles out and over the ancient carpet, stinging her tongue and the backs of her teeth.

Her eyes water as she wretches again, painfully heaving the contents of her stomach out of her nose and her mouth.

"Did you cast a wandless summoning spell?"

Hermione gives a noncommittal groan because she has just realized that she has gotten vomit in her hair. Kingsley takes this as an affirmative and she doesn't correct him. She vomits again but has the wherewithal to hold her hair back from her face.

He rubs her back in small circles, like he is trying to be comforting, but has no experience with the gesture. "Do you still have the rock?" he asks when she seems to have finished.

She nods but doesn't trust her voice. Her eyes are shut as she wills her insides to settle down. She fishes with shaking fingers into her pocket, but after a moment, she opens her eyes and digs in her other pocket. She stands, digging into her back pockets and then patting down the sides of her jumper. "It was here," she says. "I had it. I swear I put it in my pocket before I disapparated."

Kingsley stands, too, casts  _scourgify_ , and gives her a long and tired look. "You're probably confused. It's been a long few days. Go take a shower. I'll send Kreacher up with some easy broth, but I've got to Floo the ministry first and owl Remus. We've been looking for you around the clock since you were taken. I need to tell them that you're safe."

**Friday, September 27th. Afternoon.**

Fred is dead. Fred Weasley. She only finds out when George comes with his parents to see her the day after she gets back. No one thought to tell her because the anguish of loss is still such a fresh wound that everyone who is suffering thinks everyone else knows and is suffering, too, but Hermione is still confused to wake up in a bed and she won't turn the lights off even when she sleeps and so the news hits her like a slap across the face or a fist in the stomach.

George is a mirror without a reflection. He doesn't smile and he doesn't blink and Molly Weasley hovers but it's obvious that she doesn't know what to say and so when they sit down to lunch—Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, George, Molly, Arthur, Bill, Fleur, Kingsley, Tonks, and Remus—Hermione sits down next to George at the far end of the table and slips her hand into his. He squeezes it so tight that she thinks her fingers might snap but she doesn't make him let go.

"It was a fire," Lupin explains after dinner as he and Hermione are clearing the table. She doesn't ask. He volunteers the information. "The same day we lost you."

And then Hermione knows who was screaming under the burning beast and regret stings her tongue and eyes. If only she had been faster. She saw him. She knew what was happening. She could have been there. She could have helped.

"Did he suffer?" she asks because she has always been too curious for her own good.

Lupin sighs and looks much older than he really is, "Yes, I'm afraid. Burning alive is rarely, shall we say, pleasant."

* * *

**Friday, September 27th. Late at night.**

Hermione wakes up in a cold sweat, her heart is pounding in her ears and she is very, very afraid. She is on her back, facing the ceiling and she does not dare to open her eyes. There is a weight on her chest, making it hard to breathe. It is inches from her face and it smells like the memory of rot. It's looking curiously down at her, she knows, its long nails poised above her throat, above the pulse point. She quakes.

Outside her room, there is yelling, but she cannot make out the words.  _Please_ , she begs silently in her head,  _please, someone help me!_   _Help me!_

Tears leak out from between her closed eyes and the creature watches with its flat stare as they slide sideways down her face and into her ears.

"You can't just watch her sleep!" Comes Molly's tired voice from the other side of the door.

"Why not?" is Ron's muffled reply. "You have no idea! No idea what she's been through and I'm not going to leave her alone to deal with whatever messed up shit they did to her! You heard what Kingsley said! He could barely get a word out of her."

The creature's claw hovers over her eye. It will blind her, she knows this suddenly, because sight is the barrier between them.

"But Ron," Molly tries feebly, "she's a  _girl_."

"What's your point? So is Ginny."

But it hesitates. It wants to hurt her, but it won't. Hermione knows it very badly wants to reach inside of her and pull pieces out one at a time, but it will not touch her. Not now. Not yet. It does not move. There is light filtering in through her eyelids, and she can see its shadow, impossibly large, moving on top of her.

"Hermione's as good as a sister to us," Harry says quietly.

"Yeah!" Ron is louder. "And I'm not going to let my sister suffer whatever bloody...whatever they did to her...alone!"

The door to her room bangs open and the weight leaves her chest. She gasps sharply and snaps bolt-upright, her eyes wide and unseeing. She is awake, looking furiously around, but the room is empty. There is a lamp in the corner and the room would not be dark even without the light outlining her two best friends in the doorway.

Ron swears and leans back against the door, clutching a rolled-up sleeping bag to his chest but Harry is by her side in an instant, dropping his own sleeping back and wrapping her in a one-armed hug as she forces her breath to slow down before she loses it completely.

"It's ok," he soothes. "It was just a nightmare. It's over. You're safe."

"Sorry," she says, offering Harry a wavering smile.

"Don't mention it," Harry answers, not looking at her. "It's fine." His voice is light.

Ron slowly walks forward and sits down on her other side. "You're alright, yeah?" he asks, and just like that, the months of awkward dating and then even more awkward month of not-dating are buried in the distant past and she and Ron are friends again and this, she knows, is half of why she will always love Ron as a friend—because he is loyal to her no matter what. He may wander off and they may fight, but he always comes back and is always there when it counts.

"Yeah," she says, and means it when she says it. "Yeah. I'm ok."

* * *

**Saturday, September 28th.**

She doesn't want to be idle. She feels like if she is left alone for too long the dark will creep in along the edges of the room and will swallow her back into that stinking, wretched room. She asks—no, begs—Kingsley to give her something to do. He hands her a stack of parchments.

"A code," he says, "We don't know what it means, but we've been intercepting pieces of it for the last two months."

"You think they're planning something." It isn't a question. She is looking at the top page. It is a mess of runes, and she only knows about sixty percent of them on sight.

"They're always planning something. So are we."

* * *

**Tuesday, October 1st.**

It is three days until Harry and Ron will leave her side, although she knows it will be much longer until they all stop sleeping in the same room. They seem to want to make up for her capture by remaining vigilant now. But war doesn't stop when someone goes missing and it certainly doesn't stop when they come back and seven days after Hermione has returned, there is a battle somewhere and Harry and Ron have to go, although Hermione knows that they would both rather stay with her. There is something comfortable in pretending that it is just the three of them and the rest of the world doesn't exist.

Before they leave, Harry presses a wand into her hand.  _Her_  wand. The one she lost when she was captured. She thought it was gone forever and hasn't even bothered asking for it. She was too afraid to know what had become of it. But now it is here in her hands but Harry is pleading with her before she can even process the possession. "Please don't do anything. Not until we get back. I can't lose you again, Hermione, and neither can Ron. Not now."

Then he is gone before she can say  _what about me? What am I supposed to do without you?_  and she is fairly certain that he planned it like that but now that she is alone, she doesn't know what to do with herself. Crookshanks winds around her ankles. He hasn't left her side since his return from the Burrow two days ago, where Molly had been taking care of him "Because we thought you were…" but Molly trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. Hermione didn't press for more details. She didn't need to. 

* * *

**Friday, October 4th.**

She is getting nowhere in the code breaking. Something about moving something, something, something.

She asks to be put back into battle.

Remus shakes his head. He is an old man. He is a mountain worn to dust. "No, Hermione. The last time you went into battle, we almost lost you, and if that weren't bad enough, Harry and Ron were going crazy looking for you. I was afraid we would lose them, too. So, no. I think it best for everyone if you just work on going through those artifacts at the ministry."

Hermione is not a fool. She knows that Remus is telling her that she is a liability and she wants to scream because this is  _her_  war, too.

In the hallway, the portrait of Sirius' mother is awakened. " _Filth! Scum! By-products of dirt and vileness! Half-breeds, mutants, freaks!"_

Hermione would destroy that portrait if she could. She would rip it from the wall and splinter it if she could.

" _Begone from this place! Mudbl-"_

Just then, there is a sound of wood splintering and cloth ripping and the portrait of Walburga Black screams once. Just once.

Lupin and Hermione are in the hall immediately, wands drawn, backs to the wall. Lupin raises a hand to stop her from walking forward. He takes a step towards the hall and then another, but a strangled cry rings out.

"No!" Kreacher howls, "No! My Mistress! My Mistress! She is," and then they can hear as he crumples to the floor with broken sobs.

Lupin and Hermione rush forward now, caution discarded behind them. Where the portrait once hung in the long hallway leading from the front door, there was now a portrait-sized splintering in the wood, a gaping hole into the dining room on the other side of the wall.

There are feet pounding around them now.

"What the hell?" shouts Ron as he and Harry shoot down the stairs.

"What happened?" Tonks barrels around the corner, knocking over the troll-leg umbrella stand.

Mrs. Weasley is close behind her, "Is everyone alright?"

Kreacher howls like an animal in pain from his heap on the floor.

"The security must have been compromised. We have to go. Everyone, grab your things. Ron, watch the door with me. Nymphadora-"

"I'll watch the door with you and Ron."

"No. Help Molly pack. We have to leave fast. Get word to your mother to lower the wards. Harry, Hermione, get what you need and meet us back here. We have fifteen minutes. Raise an alarm if you see anything. Everyone move!"

Hermione's tongue is lead and her ears are underwater and her feet are carrying her up to her room to help Harry throw random, reduced items into his trunk and into her beaded bag and they are leaving the house and they are apparating in groups of three to Tonk's mother's home and things are moving so fast that she does not have time to stop and think and she barely manages to hang onto Crookshanks, who has been shoved into his carrier by too many hands. 

* * *

**Saturday, October 12th. Night.**

Hermione cannot sit still. They have all been at Ted and Andromeda Tonks' house for three days. Even Kreacher was eventually pulled from the ragged bits of his mistress's portrait.

Hermione is sure that she is going mad.

Harry and Ron are out hunting Horcruxes again—something she is still sore to realize she isn't allowed to do. They have gone, she knows, because it was killing Harry to hide out in a safehouse when people were dying for a war he is not allowed to fight. Not yet, anyway. The order won't risk losing him before he kills Voldemort. They've all rallied around a prophecy most of them have never even heard (although everyone who was at the ministry that night last year knows the details), but they aren't so confident that they'll let Harry loose in the war if they can help it.

So he and Ron have gone off hunting Horcruxes because they need a distraction from this, but all either boy seems to want to do is lock her in a little box until everything is better. They won't even tell her why Kreacher has the locket. Which is just  _so stupid and selfish_ , as she shouted at them before they left because she is the clever one and they won't get anywhere without her.

She knows there is a tactical advantage to her staying behind, too. She can do so much good for the order by figuring out dark curses before they are ever used. She tries to ignore the ache that comes with knowing that it is Ron who Harry needs with him for the hunt, and not her. She tries not to think about how it has always been Harry and Ron and if she wasn't so useful, so clever, they might not have ever wanted her at all.

After they leave, she sets to work on the code again. She knows definitively they are moving something, but she doesn't know anything else about it, including what it is and where it is going. There is a series of numbers, repeated in each page of parchment: 7192086554817101 and it has to mean something, but she doesn't know what. It isn't an Azkaban number. It doesn't have any arithmancy significance. It doesn't mean anything at all, as far as she can tell, but it is always there, and there has to be a reason she doesn't see yet.

After so many hours, she gives up. It could be days before Harry and Ron come home, so waiting up for them would just drive the knife of being unneeded further into her chest, so she goes upstairs.

Hermione is sharing a room with Ginny who is  _nice_ , but who always pretends to be harder than she is, and sometimes Hermione wearies of Ginny's brave sneer and the scared eyes behind the look. They listen to Potterwatch now, and they listen for names of people they know in the list of the dead.

Tonight is a good night. No one new is dead or missing. 

* * *

**Thursday, October 17th. Evening.**

She is in the backyard, watching the orange and pink sunset without really thinking about it when the call comes in the form of a Patronus shooting past her and into the house. She races back inside just as Tonks vanishes with a snap.

Her mind is moving twice as fast now, because she is frightened and she is more awake than she has been in days, and suddenly a thought occurs to her: Maybe it isn't anything magical at all. Maybe it's just another logic puzzle. The pieces of the code fall together.

7192086554817101

Read backward, 1017184556802917. 17-10. Today's date. Maybe she's reading too much into it, but maybe she isn't. She glances at the clock.

The Death Eaters haven't moved in weeks, which could only mean they've been planning something big. Maybe whatever they're moving is part of that. Maybe it's a Horcrux! It's 6:27 right now. If it is happening tonight, and the first piece of the series is the date, and the second is a time, then maybe the rest are coordinates? She doesn't have time to wonder if this is correct because if she is right, then it's already almost time and she is wasting precious seconds to intercept...whatever it is that they are moving. She is Hermione Granger. She is the cleverest witch of her age. She has to help.

She unfurls a map on the kitchen table, locates the coordinates, and disapparates before she can second-guess herself.

She is being squeezed through a tube that is too tight for her to fit through and she knows that her lungs are going to explode from the pressure and then, all at once, she is thrown out of the apparition tunnel and she is rolling along the ground and she slams into a tree. Sparks of color to flash behind her eyes and a hiss of pain escapes between her teeth.

"What was that?" Calls a woman's voice that Hermione thinks she might recognize but cannot place.

"I don't know, Alecto," comes a gravelly reply, dripping with ill-disguised disgust. Yaxley. Hermione is on her feet and her wand is in her hand in an instant, staring into the darkening woods around her. "Why don't you go check?"

Alecto mumbles something, low and sulky.

"Then I suggest we get a move on. The Order has already started to trickle in, and I want our prisoner out of here before he is spotted."

Hermione edges forward silently, hugging trees as she approaches the voices. Bravery is beating in her blood now. They have a prisoner. A prisoner who needs help. They're moving a prisoner. Here. In northern Scotland, away from everything. She was right. She was  _right!_

She can see them now. There are three of them around a dark lump on the ground.

"Lumos!" Says the tall one in front, and lights up his own face. Hermione doesn't recognize him, but he can't be much older than she is. He bends down to the lump on the ground. It is their prisoner, but Hermione had expected as much, given the conversation she just overheard.

The prisoner is a tall man in a tattered gray shirt and dark pants. He has no shoes and his toes are turning a worrying shade of blue in the dying light. His arms and legs are bound in thick, winding ropes, but he has a black bag over his head, and so Hermione doesn't know who he might be, or whether he is dangerous enough to merit this treatment. Whoever it is can only be an ally of hers to be such a threat to the Death Eaters.

"How are we supposed to move him?" Asks the one Hermione doesn't know, and lodges a kick at the bound man, catching him in the side so hard Hermione swears she hears bone snap, but the man in the hood doesn't so much as moan. Hermione wonders if he is conscious. If he is human. If he is even alive.

" _Levicorpus_ , you idiot," snarls Yaxley. He must be the taller figure in the back, then.

"I've got the light," retorts the man in the front. "Someone else will have to lift him."

"Carrow." Yaxley is cool when he says it. He is in charge in whatever mission this is.

Alecto Carrow grumbles something as she shuffles forward, points her wand at the body.

Hermione takes one step forward, and a twig snaps under her boot. Four heads snap toward her as she flattens herself against the tree, narrowly missing the two jets of green light that are fired at precisely where she just stood.

Several things happen at once. Hermione whirls around the tree, shouting, "Stupefy!" The Death Eaters train their wands on the tree she is hiding behind. The prone figure on the ground erupts into action. He is on his feet faster than Hermione can see and throws himself, still bound, at the Death Eater with the light. The man falls under the weight of the prisoner, something snaps loudly, his wand is thrown from his hand, and they are all plunged into darkness.

There is a yell and the sound of something being dragged quickly across the forest floor. Yaxley swears loudly and shoots a spell out into the darkness, and for one second something completely inhuman appears, dazzling yellow light flickering off of its flat, featureless face as the spell connects with it. But Hermione realizes it was just a tree as the bark splinters off in hundreds of directions at once.

Hermione uses the fading light burned into her retinas to send a stunning spell in Yaxley's direction.

There is nothing at all after that for long, painful moments until Hermione finds enough air in her lungs to whisper "Lumos!" Her light is weak at first, but as she scans the space between the trees and illuminates no standing Death Eaters, it gets brighter and catches on a dark mass on the ground. She swivels and sees Yaxely, unconscious, but still breathing. She edges nearer, wand drawn, and snatches the wand from the dirt near his out-flung arm before she returns her attention to the prone figures.

"Please, no," she prays to no one as she rushes forward.

As she does, the mass moves and the prisoner rolls back, revealing the body of the youngest Death Eater, his neck badly snapped to the side. With shaking fingers, Hermione reaches down toward him, checking for a pulse, her eyes fixed on the still-hooded prisoner.

"You killed him. He's dead," she tells the man, and is surprised that her voice does not shake as much as her hands do, "And Yaxley's unconscious, but I don't know where Carrow went." She glances around. There is no sign of her, but she knows that she cannot be too far away. "Are you hurt?"

The prisoner's hood cocks gently to one side.

"Can you speak English?"

There is still no response.

She considers taking his hood off, but then her eyes slide back to the dead Death Eater, still warm under her fingertips. Ideally, she would like to avoid a similar fate from a badly deranged prisoner of war, who seems less like a friend than he had from behind her tree. Someone who can kill a Death Eater bound, gagged, and masked isn't someone she should underestimate. "Petrificus Totalus," she says and the body of the prisoner locks up immediately. She edges forward and shakily pulls off the hood.

At first, she doesn't recognize the frozen face shining in her wandlight. His hair is shaved so close to his scalp that she can't tell what color it would be and most of his face is so badly covered in bruises and swollen, split tissue that it takes her a moment to piece together the flat gray eyes staring blankly up at her. They are the only part of him that moves. His stare is vaguely calculating, distantly bored. He stares at her the way a lion watches a mouse when it is not hungry.

"Malfoy?" she asks this out loud because she is so startled that the word leaves her lips before she can stop it.

His eyes flash to hers when she says his name, and then they are tracing her face like she is a book that he can read.

She locks his legs and arms with jinxes just to be safe. She has seen what he can do while bound.

Hermione entertains the idea of leaving him here for the Death Eaters or the Order or the wolves to find, but she can't really leave him, of course, even though he most certainly deserves it. Even though it is his fault that Dumbledore is dead and this war is blasting holes in her life. Everything, she realizes suddenly, can be traced back to this stupid boy and all the fool choices he has made. It is sorely tempting to leave him here to rot, but at the end of the day, she is Hermione Granger and leaving people to rot is just not what she does. She thinks about Hannah and Luna, and this mercurial boy who defied expectations and gave them a chance to be buried properly.

"Okay," she huffs, "Alright. I'm not going to leave you here. Just don't try to do to me what you did to him," she nods back at the Death Eater behind her, rubs her thumb in small circles around the base of her wand, "I have-"  _I have a serious desire to leave you here to rot, so don't test me. I have friends who don't know where I am and who won't notice I was gone if I get back first. No one will ask questions. No one will miss you. I have no reason to save you. I have all the power here and you have none. I have muggle blood in my veins and you think that makes me less, but my humanity and my heritage make me more than you will ever be._ "a wand." She holds it and waggles it back and forth. The lumos wavers with the motion. It makes her feel faintly carsick. "Ok?"

He, obviously, does not respond. Because he can't. Because his jaw is so swollen that she is surprised he can still hold his head upright.

"Ok.  _Finite!_ "

She waves her wand and he is unfrozen but he does not move. "Right," she huffs, "Are you hurt?"

Malfoy gives her a long look through his badly beaten face. His eyes narrow, and she only catches it because she is staring at them- still the only part of his face that she can recognize.

"I mean in any immediate, life-threatening way. Obviously, you've been better." She glances at Yaxley's prone figure. She should take him to the ministry for questioning. It is the smart thing to do… but she can't risk leaving Malfoy for someone else to find or for Carrow whenever she comes back. He's hurt. He needs help. Is it better to help the injured or arrest the guilty?

He shakes his head. Blood trickles from his nose in a slow-moving stream with the gesture and it glistens black in her wand light. It looks like a slug. She wonders if it is as painful as it looks.

"Ok. Will you come quietly?"

He tilts his head to one side and doesn't answer. His eyebrows might lower, but that could also just be a trick of the shimmer of wandlight.

She folds her arms across her chest, suddenly feeling very cold and also very stupid. "Look, I don't know what they wanted with you or where you were headed, but Carrow is probably going to be back soon with help. Maybe you'd rather just stay here to take your chances rather than accept getting rescued by a–by someone like me. That's up to you." She drags bent fingers through her hair, driving it back from her face. She should have put it up before she decided to take off on some half-formed lead. Or, better yet, she shouldn't have gone at all. Or at least she should have  _told_ someone where she was off to. "I don't know. What I want to know is, are you, Draco Malfoy, king of Ferrets, going to let me rescue you? Yes or no? Yes means you come. No means I leave you here and take Yaxley in instead."

He is quiet for so long that Hermione thinks he isn't going to answer. She is waiting for him to either nod or shake his head. His jaw is so swollen she knows must be broken but she isn't sure if it's broken in a way that's damaged his hearing or ruined his voice. Jaw breaks can be bad like that. Hannah's was much the same when she finally arrived.

Then, slowly, a red tongue darts out between his lips and moistens them, smearing dark blood around his mouth. "Yes," he rasps. He sounds like he is speaking through a mouthful of granite. His front teeth are jagged points and pink with old blood.

She waits for him to say something else, but when he doesn't she takes a step forward, eyes wildly tracing the trees around them, afraid of the dark and silence. "Great. Ok. I'm going to stupefy you and then I'll get us out of here. Ok?"

He takes in a breath like he is going to protest and so "Stupefy!" she says before he has the chance.


	4. Thick Blood

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for gore and violence.

**Thursday, October 17th. Continued.**

They arrive in the backyard of Andromeda's house and Hermione steps away from Malfoy's still-prone body, dropping his wrist like his skin has burned her. Her chest is heaving, but Andromeda is already walking out towards her, her wand raised and the house lit up behind her, bright yellow.

"Where have you been?" Andromeda is always calm, always composed, and always cold in a way that Hermione at once fears and admires. Her voice rings clearly in the still night air. Hermione can't tell if Andromeda even knew she left in the first place but she betrays no surprise now.

"I figured out the code. Well, enough of it to be getting on with. The Death Eaters were moving a thing. Tonight." And with this, Hermione Granger wins the Most Informative Speech of the Year award. "They had a prisoner."

Andromeda Tonks approaches the body on the ground at Hermione's feet. "Who is it?" she asks and there is no anger, still, although Hermione is sure that someone will have anger for her later. She was very stupid. Very rash. She could have gotten herself killed. Worse than killed, even, if they had tortured information out of her.

"Draco Malfoy," Hermione's eyes follow Andromeda's down to Malfoy's battered face, mangled and expressionless, still stunned. The patches of coagulating blood along the jagged lines of broken skin shine orange and gold in the light.

The older witch considers this for a moment, simply staring at Malfoy's calm features. She looks like she is calculating the weight of each bruise, the net worth of shredded skin. "Narcissa's son?" she asks eventually, and suddenly Hermione wonders if she is looking for her sister in the battered lines of Malfoy's face.

When was the last time she even laid eyes on her sister? This might be the first time that Andromeda is seeing her nephew and he is all but unrecognizable.

"Yes," she says eventually because there are no real words for this sort of situation. Hermione rubs her thumb over the base of her wand.

"You shouldn't have brought him here," Andromeda is still staring down at him, etching the image of him into her brain.

"Sorry?" Hermione's voice is high when she answers and she rocks forward on her feet because she is sure that she has misheard Andromeda's words because her expression is too tender to mean that she is turning him away. Where will he go if he cannot stay here?

"He is a Death Eater and he probably has a trace on him. Take him to Azkaban immediately. I will send word to Dawlish that you will be bringing him shortly."

"Azkaban?" Hermione echoes. She is trying to keep up with what is happening, but she can't understand. "No," she says because maybe she wasn't clear the first time. She tilts her chin down and speaks out loud and clear, just so there is no confusion. "He was their prisoner. Look what they did to him!" She gestures with her left hand at Malfoy's face, which is still leaking blood onto the grass.

"And he is also a Death Eater," Andromeda repeats. She is calm, and this is starting to annoy Hermione, just a bit. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a shadow move, but Andromeda doesn't seem to notice it because she is still staring down at Malfoy with an almost loving expression. "How they deal with their own is no business of ours."

"This is insane!" Hermione counters and her voice is loud and she is gesturing at the air between them. "He's hurt!"

"No." Andromeda's eyes rise to Hermione's face and the cold composure in them stops Hermione before she can say another word. Andromeda's hands are clasped in front of her, around her wand. Her knuckles are white. "This is a war. He is the enemy. Dawlish will let the Aurors on guard know that you are on your way."

Hermione shakes her head. She has to calm down. Shouting won't accomplish anything except making her look more childish than she is. "I've never been to Azkaban before. I can't take him there."

"To the ministry, then. Kingsley should still be in his office. It isn't too late yet. I would offer to take him, but I am on healer's watch until Nymphadora and the others return. Excuse me." She turns and heads back to the house. The conversation is very clearly over.

Hermione takes three deep breaths through her nose. Of course, she shouldn't have brought Draco Malfoy here. She was a fool to think otherwise. But what else could she do? He is laid out as still as a corpse when she takes his wrist and apparates them both to the ministry. 

* * *

The Atrium is empty when she arrives and she doesn't know where Kingsley's office is. Since the assassination of Rufus Scrimgeour on the night of Bill and Fleur's wedding, the ministry has kept the movements of the new minister as quiet as possible to avoid another attack. Thank god the Death Eater coup for the ministry failed. Hermione doesn't know what they would do if it fell.

Malfoy is laying on the ground at her feet, but his wrist is still in her hand. His fingers twitch.

Gingerly, Hermione sets his wrist on the ground at his side. She takes a step away from him and points her wand at his chest.

His eyes open and stare at the ceiling before wheeling in a slow circle around himself, taking in his surroundings.

"We're in the Atrium at the ministry," she says, although he probably doesn't need her to say it. Her voice echoes around her even though she was trying to be quiet. She looks around, too. The shadows are long in the corners around the black fireplaces and she tries not to imagine what could be lurking in those dark spaces. She remembers the dark cell and the body and the monster in the corner and she takes a step back towards Malfoy without realizing it. "We're waiting for someone."

"Who?"

His voice startles her. She didn't think he would speak, had forgotten that he could. His voice is shoes scraping over dirt, and it is deeper than she remembers it being, and she wonders if it's because he's older, because he doesn't talk much now, or because he's been injured. It could be any of them but it doesn't really matter which.

She opens her mouth to tell him the truth about why they are here—that Andromeda turned them away and now he is going to prison and it is in no way her fault at all—but then there are footsteps. Several sets of them, and there are loud voices that she knows but doesn't believe. She is afraid, suddenly, that something has gone terribly wrong and no one has yet realized it.

"Untie me," he hisses so quickly she has to replay his words in her head to understand their meaning.

She must give him a look that says quite clearly how insane he must think she is, because he gives her an even look and says very calmly, "Fenrir Greyback and six of his werewolves are coming up the stairs at the end of the hall. They are unkind to witches. My body will slow them down for a few minutes, at most, but they will persist until they find you. They can smell you as clearly as I can and they are faster than you are. I will not attack you. I do not want to die by the hand of your great black friend, Mudblood. I am more useful alive than dead."

She only has a second to decide and she doesn't have time to piece together his words, but he is clearly not on good terms with the Death Eaters and the enemy of her enemy must, hopefully, be her friend. Under normal circumstances, his use of the word  _Mudblood_  would be enough for her to leave him there to rot, but his voice is so pathetic, slurred around broken teeth and a badly broken jaw. She whispers  _Diffindo_  and tries to aim at the thick knot in the rope at the side of his thigh, but her hands shake so badly that the spell also cuts through the dark fabric of his pants and the skin beneath them, too. He lets out a sound that might have been a sigh and then he is on his feet.

Hermione doesn't have time to apologize or scream before he is upon her, one hand clamped around her mouth and the other gripped around her wrist so hard that she can feel the bone bending under his fingers. "Don't make a sound," he breathes into her ear. His breath smells like iron and rot. Her neck aches from straining against his grip and she realizes he is dragging her backward away from the staircase and the voices. She stumbles along, her feet begging for purchase, but it doesn't matter because he is moving her whether she wants to go or not. She tried to raise her wand against him, but of course he keeps her wrist pinned to her side as they move.

Then, suddenly, he is not moving anymore and she realizes that they are in an alcove that she has never noticed before. It must be a storage closet whose door has been left open, a disinterested part of her brain pipes up distractingly. Once they are in the closet, his pins her against the far wall and pulls his hand from her wrist. He keeps his other hand clamped firmly across her mouth, though, and breathes, "Not a noise, no matter what," against her hair.

Of course, her first instinct is to punch him in the face, tie him up, and then disapparate both of them somewhere safe, but Malfoy isn't paying any attention to her. He is half-turned turned toward the open door like a dog scenting the air and the voices are getting closer. Light is streaming into the cupboard and his face is as blank as a doll's, his eyes fixed out of the room onto something she can't see. Hermione's back is pressed against the wall and Malfoy has positioned himself directly between her in the door. Probably to keep her from running out and giving them away, she thinks savagely. As if she would ever do something as stupid as that!

Someone hoots in laughter and there is the scuffling of shoes across the stone. Someone breathes heavily. Hermione realizes he lied to her. There is a flood of feet across marble.

"Come on now, Mister Minister," Fenrir's voice is more wolf than human. "Where's your sense of fun?"

Kingsley answers, but his voice is too quiet for Hermione to hear him, even though she holds her breath and strains her ears to listen.

There is a round of jeering laughter and something slaps against the ground. Hermione struggles against Malfoy's grip, but his hand across her chest is like an iron bar. She tries to scream against his hand, but cannot make a sound. She bites at him, tastes the tang of iron, but still he doesn't move.

"Now, that wouldn't be in good sport, would it, Mister Minister?"

She can't start turning to disapparate and she can't get her arm up to hex him. She kicks him instead, brings her hands up to claw at his arm, raking away thick tracts of skin, but he doesn't so much as look at her. Gone are the days when an ounce of pain would send Malfoy squealing for his father. Her face is wet with tears. She curses him over and over in her mind and wishes she had left him with the Death Eaters in the wood.

There is a scuffle of footsteps and the sound of skin connecting with skin. Someone swears, but others laugh.

"We've got a fighter, hey boys!" Greyback crows.

Hermione closes her eyes, willing the tears to stop.  _What are you doing?_  she silently prays,  _Someone, anyone help him!_

This is the point when the Order of the Phoenix is supposed to sweep in and save the day. Here is when the Aurors swarm through the fireplaces and kill Greyback and his monsters. Where is Lupin? Where is Dumbledore? Where is god or justice or the triumph of good over evil? Kingsley Shacklebolt, the minister of magic, who rubbed circles on Hermione's back when she vomited onto the floor, who handed her stacks of code to decipher, is being taken away by werewolves. Where are Harry and Ron?

A scuffle breaks out in the Atrium and Hermione freezes when someone shouts, "He's got my wand!" Hope roars wild in her chest.

"Expecto Patronum!" Bellows Kingsley, "Find Arthur," he snaps out as someone collides with him, "The ministry has fallen!" The last syllable is cut off as he smacks to the floor and Hermione winces at the sound, "They are coming!" There is a flash of white light as Kingsley's Lynx rushes past their closet.

Greyback swears loudly, "The Dark Lord isn't going to like that. Come on!" There is the sound of something heavy dragging across the floor. Hermione can see the green light of a fireplace coming to life across the hall. "The Manor!" growls Greyback. Six voices do the same and then the atrium is silent.

It is only when he steps forward into the Atrium without her that Hermione realizes Malfoy has released her.

Hermione snaps into action. Her mind is filing away new information, processing changes, and looking up material even as she chases after Malfoy and stops a foot behind him as he bends stiffly at the waist, examining something that she hasn't seen yet. Questions are tumbling one after the other out of her mouth. "Can we follow them to the manor? How did you know how many there were? Where are they taking him? What are you looking at? Are you working with them? Answer me, Malfoy!"

He crouches down and when she walks right up behind him, she sees that it is blood in a pool on the floor that he is staring at. "Whose is that?" She asks before she can stop herself. She thinks she knows, but she doesn't want to assume anything, especially now that nothing seems as stable as it did half an hour ago. She imagines that the floor she is standing on is ice, only she didn't realize that before she heard it start to snap under her feet. She rubs her wand with her thumb in small, nervous circles.

Malfoy looks up at her. "Do I look like a tracking hound to you, Granger?" There is a cool scorn in his voice that she recognizes; a smug lilt to his aristocratic accent and she grabs on to the sense of comfortable antagonism that it awakens in her.

"Then how did you know how many there were? How did you know they had K-Kingsley? Why did you lie to me?" The words choke out before she can stop them. Then, again, the question forces itself out, "Where are they taking him?" Like she doesn't already know. Like there is hope for him.

"I am not an oracle, Mudblood," and his pale gaze slides past her and around to the fireplaces. "What I know and what I don't know are not known for naught."

She furrows her brow and raises her wand at him. "How did you know how many there were before you saw them, then?" she asks and her voice is cold. This is important. This might be an answer that she can use. She just watched their best hope get taken away by a pack of werewolves. She doesn't want to be fucked with. Not now. "Did you know?" He must have; she can't see any other explanation for the way he dragged her into the closet and kept her pinned against the wall.

"I know many things. You'll have to be more specific." He eyes the tip of her wand the way one watches a fly on a windowsill.

"Don't play dumb, Malfoy. You know what I'm talking about." and she isn't sure that she could tell him out loud if she wanted to. The words she needs to say don't exist. Not in any language she knows, anyway. How does one sum up the witness of atrocity? One doesn't, of course, and that is the most violent part of it—the part that can't even be put into words.

"What, pray, do you think you will do with that wand that will make me answer you?"

The question catches her off guard, but he hasn't moved from his place on the floor and suddenly she realizes that she must look like she's threatening him. Then, she wonders if maybe this isn't such a bad thing, since he dragged her across the floor not five minutes ago. Hermione is in a place where paths fork. She has two options: She can be  _sure_  that the information she wants from Malfoy comes and quickly. She's never cast an unforgivable before, detests dark magic as a rule, but this is a war, and she has never had trouble mastering spells in a pinch. The boy—man, monster—on the ground in front of her is the first one to teach her hatred, the first one to infect her with a slur that she has spent the last seven years trying to rip out of her own veins, the one who set up Dumbledore to die. If there was ever someone beyond redemption, who was not worth her mercy, it is him. But she has a second option, too, and soon as she knows that she has a choice, she is doomed to make the right one.

She lowers her wand, but only just so the point is fixed on his still-blue toes. She doesn't do it  _for_  him—she'll never do him any favors if she can help it _._  She doesn't do it because he is worth saving—he isn't. She does it because he is not worth ruining herself over and she doesn't want the stink of dark magic on her for the sake of someone like  _him_.

"I won't do anything to you," she finally says, "I just don't want you to grab me again and I don't trust you."

He considers this for a moment and doesn't answer.

"But please, Malfoy," she grinds the words out between clenched teeth.

"You may ask one question." His eyes are off of her again and she doesn't know what he's looking at, but his gaze is flicking back and forth like he can read secrets on the walls behind her.

She doesn't need long to figure out how she'll spend her one question. "How did you know how many were coming?" she repeats. Malfoy's posture changes so that he is turned slightly away from the dark corner directly behind Hermione and she feels a prickle along the nape of her neck that she associates with being watched. She flicks her eyes back to the corner but doesn't see anything in the shadow.

"I guessed, Mudblood," he says distractedly, and then he is looking at the blood again, dipping his fingers into it. "Ask your dark friend if you want to know more about that."

He doesn't answer anything she says after that, although she asks again and again what does he mean? who is he working for? why was he a prisoner? what the hell does he mean by  _dark friend_? Does he mean Kingsley? If so, this is racist in a whole new way that he has never mentioned before.

"We should leave," he stands so suddenly she takes a step back and her breath catches in her throat. If he notices, he doesn't give any sign. "We are not safe here."

"Well, obviously," she huffs. She doesn't know where to take him, though. She knows she was supposed to take him to Azkaban, but that was before things got quite so complicated. For now, though, she doesn't know what to do. She can't take him back to Andromeda's, and she hasn't been to any of the other safe houses that are currently in use. She has to contact Lupin before she does anything else with Malfoy. She has to tell them about Kingsley so they can mount a rescue and set things straight once and for all. "Come here," she says and holds out her arm. "I know where we'll go."

He loops his hand around the cloth of her jumper like he doesn't want to touch her. Like she is contagious. She grinds her teeth together and her lips thin. 

* * *

When they arrive at Grimmauld place, it is as silent as death, which is exactly what she was hoping for. He doesn't complain when she raises her wand and stupefies him before running up to the second floor to look for first aid supplies because she can't leave him broken up but she can't leave him on his own, either. He isn't exactly trust-inspiring. When she returns with an armful of bandages, he is precisely where she left him, and she lets out a shaky breath before she ennervates him.

"Here," she says, and shoves an armful of cloth at him. He inspects the bundle warily before he takes it and then pulls out the metal first aid kit that she was lucky enough to find in the bathroom on the second landing. "There's a bottle of dittany, some wound cleaner, and some bruise cream, too. I don't know much about healing spells, past some basics, but those should take care of the worst of it."  _Hopefully,_  she doesn't say. "You probably shouldn't, uh, shower until your feet are a normal color again," she is reaching back in her head for everything she has ever learned about first aid magic. "They look a bit frost-bitten to me. I'll fix your face for you if you want."

He gives her a look that says quite plainly that he would rather not, but he nods.

Her wand is out and between her fingers, and, "Let's start with your mouth," she suggests. "Go on, open up."

He gingerly, grudgingly, opens his mouth.

She tries not to gag. It is not that he is simply missing teeth. There are jagged chunks of tooth still embedded in his gums and other spaces where there are no teeth left at all. All things considered, though, the damage is much worse to his top teeth than to his bottom ones, and his right bottom molars are almost completely undamaged, although they are as pink as his gums. Hermione has seen a mouth or two in her time. She can remember summers spent reading in the chair in her mother's office, leafing through Dental Reference Books and asking questions about gum disease. She tries not to think about what her parents would say if they could see Malfoy's mouth now. Every time she thinks about them, a knife twists in her chest and she must repeat to herself that they are safe in Australia like it is a prayer.

The stench of rot is overpowering. She looks away from him and breathes through her mouth. She steels herself, looks back and says "Episkey," with a wave of her wand. The split in his lip mends and a chunk of tooth is pushed out of his fast-repairing gum line. He prods it into his palm with his tongue and opens his mouth again.

She turns her head to the left to breathe shakily before returning her attention to him, trying not to inhale in his face, lest she actually vomit. God, he smells horrible. "Episkey," she says again and she can hear his jaw popping back into place with a nauseating  _click._  "Episkey," and his nose straightens with a series of small crunches as cartilage shifts over bone. "Episkey," and the thin stream of blood leaking from a gash on his sunken cheek sews itself shut and the cheek beneath it re-inflates.

After forty-five minutes and six more castings, his face is almost visible under a thick layer of bruising, although she still isn't sure she would recognize him. "I don't think I'll be able to do anything about the rest of your teeth, though," she adds apologetically. "I mean, I could grow them out, but maybe if you just rinse your mouth out with Dittany, it'll be better. So they aren't jagged, you know."

He nods mutely but doesn't move.

"Do you want to change?" She suggests. She glances at the clock. She has to contact the order to tell them about Kingsley but she doesn't want to do it in front of Malfoy.

He just stares at her blank as a board.

"Well, go on," she nods towards the bathroom door, "I'm not going to wait all night."

He finally goes to change and she floos Andromeda.

"Oh, Hermione," it is Tonks who answers. "I was so worried! Mum said you brought back a Death Eater? Wherever you are, don't move. Security has been compromised and the floo network isn't safe."

"I found Draco Malfoy. Some Death Eaters were taking him somewhere."

"That doesn't matter now. The ministry has fallen. Kingsley's been taken. We shouldn't be talking on this right now."

"I know. About Kingsley."

This seems to catch Tonks off guard. "What do you mean?"

"I was there." And she tells Tonks as much as she can about what she overheard from the closet at the ministry. "And so now he's changing in the bathroom."

"You left your back open to him?" Tonks roars her eyes suddenly wide with fear.

Before anything else can happen, Tonk's face has left the fire and she is standing beside Hermione her wand drawn. "Where is he?"

"I'm here, cousin." The smooth reply comes from the doorway.

Malfoy has clearly used a liberal amount of the bruise cream because his face is clear and he looks almost like the boy she knew in school. He is gaunt, and the hollows around his eyes make him seem more animal, more skeleton, than man, and his lips are still concave around an empty mouth of broken teeth, but he looks remarkably at ease in Ron's shirt (too long), Harry's pants (too short), and socks she found bunched under Ron's bed (but seem to fit him fine). Like he has owned every article of clothing all his life. Even broken, he retains a grace that she can only envy in a small corner of her mind that is reserved for such vacuous thoughts, even at times like this.

Tonk's wand is on him. "Give me a reason, Malfoy. A single one."

He just stares back at her. Hermione is invisible in the room behind the older witch. She eases her own wand out of her pocket. Later, she won't remember why she thought taking out her wand would accomplish anything. By this point, she is so thoroughly confused about Malfoy—she doesn't trust him, but she doesn't quite  _not_  trust him, either—that she isn't sure she would use her wand on him unless he decides to lunge at them.

"To what, cousin?" He asks, his head tilted gently to the side. His voice is lazy and he doesn't even look down at her wand. His eyes are on her face and they are dull as ditchwater but sparkling with something like fury.

"Don't call me that!" Tonks snarls. Her hair is turning black at the roots and her ears are sharpening into points.

He smiles like a shark, and his jagged teeth are brown in the glint of the fire. "But that is what you are, cousin. Blood, you know, is thicker than—"

And with that, Malfoy is bound where he stands and he smacks his head against a bookshelf as he falls to the left. The face Hermione so recently repaired slams so hard into the fireplace that bits of brick chip off.

Tonks does not spare a look for Hermione, but says very calmly, "I will take him to Azkaban and we will discuss your actions once I am back at the safehouse." As Tonks pulls the now-unconscious Malfoy into a standing position by his ropes, Hermione watches the thin cords of muscle stand out along her arms. She is so much stronger than she looks. Hermione marvels at her capableness. There is a snap as Tonk and Malfoy disapparate and then Hermione is alone in Grimmauld place.

There is something on the carpet that catches her attention and she stoops to pick up three wet pieces of tooth Malfoy lost when he fell. She pockets them because she isn't sure what else she should do with them and stares into the happily blazing fire, trying to collect her thoughts before she returns to Andromeda and Ted Tonks' house.


	5. The Writing on the Wall

**Friday, October 18th. Late.**

She hasn't been asleep for three hours before Ginny gently shakes her awake. "Lupin's here," the girl says quietly. Her bright brown eyes are red-rimmed from crying. Everyone has been taking the news of Kingsley hard, but Hermione was too exhausted do much more than relay a very abbreviated version of the story to Ginny and Molly before she collapsed in her bed. She hasn't seen her boys, Harry and Ron, since she got back, and she hopes that they return before news about the ministry gets out; if they have to hear it from anyone, she hopes it can be her.

She nods and swings her feet around the edge of the bed. It's a cold night, but she doesn't even look for a pair of socks. She just grabs the little bottle off of the nightstand and pads down the two flights of stairs between her room and the kitchen.

"Hermione," Lupin greets. He looks awful; like he hasn't slept in a month. "I need you to tell me—"

"Here," she holds out the vial for him. "My memories. You can see it all for yourself. It will be more accurate than a verbal account, at any rate."

He looks down at the vial. "Are you sure that you want to give me that, Hermione?"

"I don't need it to be crystal clear for me." she shrugs, "I know the facts of it well enough,"  _and I want to forget about it_.  _The more you take, the less I have to keep. This month has been horrible enough without this nightmare floating around in my head, too._

He stares at the vial for a moment longer then hesitantly takes it from her. He waves his wand over it, and murmurs a spell Hermione has never heard before. There are two vials in his hand.

She wills her sluggish brain to remember the incantation but doesn't know if it works. Honestly, between little spells like this and her new resolve to work on wandless magic, being out of school seems like more of a challenge than academia ever was.

He passes one to her and pockets the other. "You should at least keep a copy of it," he tells her, "you may want it at some point in the future."

* * *

**Tuesday, October 22nd. Early.**

It is 2:33 in the morning according to the clock above the doorframe. Hermione is sitting at the shining wooden table in Andromeda's kitchen and there is a cup of tea in her hands that went cold half an hour ago.

Ginny is asleep in their room upstairs, but Hermione's sleep is fitful these days and sometimes, when she wakes up in the dark, she is positive that she is back in that pitch-black cell. Ginny can't sleep with the lights on and Hermione doesn't know how to tell her she can't sleep in the dark. As a result, Hermione has started going to bed after the sun has come up, reading at the brightly lit kitchen table until the red eye of dawn opens on the horizon.

She's more of a coward than she ever thought she was. Even when she was little she wasn't afraid of the dark, but it must have leeched into her bones while she was in that stinking cell and she hasn't been able to shake it off yet. She hasn't told anyone in the house about it, of course. She knows, logically, that this sort of thing generally gets better with time and so she will give it time before she asks Andromeda for some Dreamless Sleep or tries to ask Ginny if maybe they could leave a light on in the corner. She just needs to give it time.

But she is getting sick of giving herself  _time_.

It's been five days since Kingsley was taken by the werewolves, seven days since she has seen or heard from Harry or Ron, and almost a month since she left that dark room. She still wonders if she never really left that the dark and she's just too mad from loneliness or fear to realize that this is all a dream or nightmare or the flash of a fever across her eyelids. Her life is nothing but the passage of time, and all the waiting she has never wanted to do in the hours between.

There hasn't even been a battle to distract her. Not that she anticipates they will let her fight, of course, given her track record, but the Death Eaters are quiet wherever they are, and the Order is still reeling from losing the ministry. The most interesting thing that has happened in the last week has been the shutdown of the floo network, and taking care of that only took Ted about five minutes.

She wishes that Harry and Ron were here. She has never missed their presence as much as she misses them now. Of course, she never expected to hear from them while they were out looking for Horcruxes. She knows it is too dangerous and their mission is too important for them to risk exposure and she can only hope that Ron is doing whatever it takes to keep Harry from trying to run off to save everyone and end this war himself.

The days are starting to get shorter and the nights are eating up more and more of the hours she whiles away on nothing. She has spent five long nights sitting at this table with cold cups of chamomile-lavender tea and the last books she'd taken from the ministry before the Death Eaters took all of that, too. She tries not to think about those stacks of dark objects, those city blocks of infernal books, all that wicked knowledge now in the hands of the enemy.

She reminds herself that no matter what they have, they're missing the ones she has with her now, and maybe that's a small victory in all of this loss. Tonight she sits with a book confiscated from the Malfoy estate. It is a theory book called  _Bestia Calumniatorem_. It sits unopened on the table before her.

Absentmindedly, she pulls Malfoy's teeth from her pocket. She hasn't been carrying them around on purpose; it's just that these are the same jeans she was wearing when she found him, and she forgot to take them out. She doesn't know what she should do with them, anyway, and so she rubs her thumb over them in the palm of her hand. Left maxillary first bicuspid, pink and dragging root; left maxillary cuspid, a cleaner removal and yellowing where the tooth once met the gum line; about 80% of a lateral incisor, jagged as a sawblade; and a crescent of what looks like it might be a central incisor.

She knows these teeth, remembers them from diagrams in her mother's office where she would sit after school in the big dentist chair, reading books or doing her homework. As she remembers this, a lump blocks her throat and her eyes sting.

She drags her knuckles angrily across her wet cheeks and murmurs a warming charm over her tea, but then it is too hot again. Sighing, she pulls her book closer, opens it to her place, and begins to read. 

* * *

**Friday, October 25th. Late Afternoon.**

The bark on the tree she is hiding behind explodes in a shower of woodchips, and she fires a spell back blindly. She is not here to fight. They have made that abundantly clear. She is here to put some of her new learning into practice. There have been five counted uses of the Fire Beast spell since Fred died and Hermione thinks she might have found a counter-curse. She's here to observe and, if she can manage it without directly involving herself in the firefight, help.

On her left, Mallory Bullstrode fires off a string of spells that Hermione has never heard before. Her short black hair is plastered to her round and shining face, but she looks almost serene in the light of magic around them. Bulstrode is her keeper for the evening, along with a mediwitch Hermione has never seen before named Nanita, who has thick dark hair and a long, earnest face. The mediwitch— Nan, as she likes to be called—is somewhere close by, but Hermione doesn't know where.

There is an ear-splitting scream.

Bulstrode grabs her arm and tugs her fiercely in the direction of the scream. Her grip is vicelike. Her nails are long and dig into Hermione's skin. Later, Hermione will run her fingertips over the crescent-shaped scabs and wonder how they happened.

It is not hard to spot a giant beast made of bright blue flame in a dark forest at night and the mediwitch is beside Hermione as she screams incantation after incantation. Hermione inhales smoke that smells like skin, " _Extinxero Iumentum_!" she chokes out and the beast raises its head to look at her, one massive paw still pinning its burning, screaming victim to the forest floor. Its eyes meet hers, two balls of blue-black flame sizing her up like a meal or a challenger. Then it turns away, raises its paw, takes one step away, and vanishes.

The mediwitch rushes forward to the still burning body and before Hermione can run to join her, Bullstrode has a firm grip on her arm again and drags her away from the thick of battle, shouting cursing wildly as they go. When they are a safe distance away, Bullstrode turns to face her.

Mallory Bulstrode is a small, thickset woman, and Hermione is at least a whole head taller than she is, but she can command a presence when she wants to and Hermione has no trouble paying attention. "What is the counter-curse?" Her voice is high and breathless, her lips are pale pink, almost like she is wearing makeup. Her eyes are burning with what Hermione thinks might be glee or what the hit wizards sometimes call "Wandlight."

Hermione says the counter curse again.

" _Extinxero Iumentum_?" repeats Bullstrode, waving her wand in a tight arch.

"ExTINxero IuMENtum," Hermione corrects, "and don't wave your wand so much. It's more straight down and then twist it at the handle. Yes. That was better."

"What will happen if it doesn't work?"

"Well," Hermione wrinkles her nose, "Either nothing at all or, if the Ignis Manticora thinks you aren't serious, it might target you instead, but I don't know if that actually happens or if it was just an embellishment by the writer in the  _Bestia Calumniatorem_."

Bulstrode gives her a hard look, "Right, well. I was supposed to take you back once you figured it out, and take over if they try to use that spell again, but I'm not risking getting killed if I don't do it right. Besides," she gives Hermione a ghost of a grin, "I have a feeling that you'll fight me if I try to bring you back to 'Dromeda's place."

Hermione smiles back and doesn't have to answer.

Mallory rolls her eyes. "You Gryffindors are all the same. Self-sacrificing ninnies, the lot of you," but there is no heat to her words and the grin is real and wolfish on her face when she speaks. "Only stick close to me, right? Dawlish will have my hide if you die on my watch. I'll cover you, you cover Nan, yeah?"

Hermione nods, grins, and then they are rushing back towards the mediwitch, spells flying as they go. 

* * *

When she gets back to Andromeda's later that night, she is dragging her feet, there is a deep cut across one cheek, and she smells like burnt skin, but she is happy. She ended the Ignis Maticora three times that night, and two of the curse victims might survive. One is Justin Finch-Fletchly and the other is a middle-aged woman who she couldn't recognize under the burns. Both are in St. Mungo's now, but Nan, the mediwitch, was hopeful that Justin will be released tomorrow morning and the older witch, sometime this week.

Hermione is bone-tired and standing feels like hard work, but she knows she needs to shower before she sleeps, or else she'll get blood and dirt all over her bed. She stands under the hot water for five minutes before she begins to nod off, which she takes as the signal to get out.

She is toweling off her hair when she glances in the fogged-over bathroom mirror. She can make out her silhouette, pale and distorted in the mist, but behind her, there is a tall, dark shadow that seems to suck the light out of the room. The lights above her flicker.

But then the moment passes. The lights above her shine happily and she's sure that she's alone in the bathroom once again. She wipes a section of the mirror clean and stares into her reflection's eyes. It's been more than a month since she was trapped in that dark cell she likes to think she's fine, but every so often, not regularly, she wonders.

"Am I losing it?" she asks herself.

No. It's ridiculous. Of course she isn't. She's just tired and trapped in the middle of the war. She just needs to give herself time. Things will return to normal soon enough. 

* * *

**Sunday, October 27th. Morning.**

She gets an owl. Lupin asks if she would be willing to sit for a meeting tomorrow. She owls back immediately, says  _Yes_ ,  _of course. What should I bring and when should I be ready?_

She is glad that  _something_  is happening.

"What was that about?" Ginny asks. She has been as bored as Hermione has been and the owl arrived while they were playing exploding snap.

"I don't really know," she replies and then shifts in her seat. She can't sit still. Ginny wins the next four games they play. 

* * *

**Monday, October 28th. 9:02 am, exactly.**

Remus is sitting across from her at the kitchen table. Dawlish is on his left. Hermione hasn't seen John Dawlish since the last battle she fought before she was captured, and that memory seems to come to her from the other side of a gulf of darkness, distant and faded.

Dawlish has small, sharp blue eyes and hair cropped close to his head. He is neither thick nor thin, and there is a chip in his nose that looks like a bit of the bridge was blown off by a curse. Other than that he looks like a normal, middle-aged man.

No one is smiling. She wonders when the last time she actually smiled was. Maybe with Harry and Ron. Maybe even before that. She doesn't remember. Her old DADA professor scrapes his hand over his face and continues the motion down to rest them on the table. The wedding band on his left hand glints in the light.

"What's going on?" She asks slowly, filled with trepidation. "Are Harry and Ron," she licks her lips, her eyes dart around the kitchen. "Are they alright? Did something happen?"

She is positive that if something happened to Harry, the entirety of Wizarding England would know about it already but she can think of no other reason for the head of the ministry's Auror office and the head of the Order of the Phoenix would call a private meeting with her. She can think of no other reason for the silencing charms Remus placed around the kitchen or the care that Dawlish put into ensuring that they were alone in the room. The sneakoscope is silent in the center of the table, but he looks at it often.

"As far as we know, they're fine, Hermione."

So Remus has heard from them, then. She tries not to be too jealous of this. "What is this meeting about, then, professor?"

He has told her to call him by his given name over and over again, but old habits die hard. The two across from her exchange a glance, like they are silently discussing who will speak next.

"Is it about Malfoy, then?" she asks because, while she knows her curse breaking work is important, coming up with one counter curse two weeks ago isn't enough to earn her this kind of special treatment. If they'd wanted to congratulate her for that, they would have done so days ago. "I've already told you everything that I can remember, and you've seen my memories." She addresses Lupin although she is sure Dawlish has also seen her memories by this point. Maybe they've called her in now because they want to know how Malfoy knew how many were there at the ministry, or maybe they want to know why she didn't try to help Kingsley. That thought has been haunting her, too. In retrospect, she is sure that Malfoy should not have been enough to stop her. He's a spineless coward—always has been—so her behavior must have been driven by a subconscious fear of the fight. Never mind the bruises on her wrist where his grip had been like iron. Never mind the way he moved faster than her eyes could follow. It must have been adrenaline. It must have been her fault. She'll wait to be asked to tell them this, of course, and she'll try not to embarrass herself too much when she owns up to her own cowardice.

"Of course, Hermione," Lupins voice is terse, but not unkind. "But things are still developing, you know. You see," he leans forward on his elbows, "Malfoy has been a bit uncooperative."

Dawlish lets out a snort and Hermione's eyes flicker toward his face.

"Ok," she replies slowly.

"Uncooperative is an understatement," explains Dawlish. His thick hands are spread on the table in front of him, his wand trapped between the wood of the table and his right palm. He rolls it vacantly. "Hasn't so much as told us his bloody name."

"Was Veritaserum ineffective?" she asks.

"You might say that, yeah," Dawlish replies and the way he says it confuses her.

"Why?"

"Bastard's a ruddy good occlumens. Veritaserum, our best legilimens. Nothing. He's a fucking locked box."

The last words are spat like a curse and there is something in them they are not telling her, but she is clever enough to know what it is already. "You've been torturing him." Her voice is even when she speaks, and she meets Dawlish's gaze. For a long moment, no one says anything. They weren't planning on telling her.

Her mind flickers to the fiery manticore and she remembers the smell of Justin's hair on fire. Fred screaming. She remembers Hannah dying in her arms. They will never recover Luna's body. So many bodies. Bodies to pile high. Bodies to fill the sea. Bodies to rot in dark, damp rooms under ancient stones, too deep for even insects to find.

So what if they've been torturing him? He is a Death Eater. He is the enemy. She imagines his face, as cold and sharp as it had been in Hogwarts, sneering out at her from behind a beaten-steal mask. Then the vision shifts and he is looking up at her from a tangle of ropes and dead bodies, and his face is smashed in and his nose is broken and pushed to one side and his eyes have no light in them. She has been carrying his three broken teeth in the pocket of her jeans for more than a week because she keeps forgetting to take them out and now they feel like they are burning through the cloth and into her skin. They feel like accusation.

A cold weight settles in her stomach and her skin feels so filthy and so tight across her bones that she wants to scrape it all off. "He's been in your prison for ten days and you've been torturing him this whole time. When did you realize that he wouldn't talk? That veritaserum wouldn't work and your legilimens were powerless? Did you at least wait a day, or was it only a couple of hours after Tonks brought him in? I can't imagine you waited any longer than that."

"Hermione," Remus' ragged voice comes to her like a supplication, "No one's tortured anyone. I'll admit that we've been using different interrogation methods, but-"

Dawlish doesn't look away. His eyes are small, wet, and dark, but there is conviction behind them. "I do what I need to do to keep this country safe, Granger. This is a  _war,_  girl. I don't expect you to understand, but-"

"You think I don't  _know_  this is a war? " Her voice is calm and her whole body feels like it has been plunged into ice water. She wants to rip out her veins and roll them into a ball and shove them at Dawlish.  _Look at this, you old monster_ , she wants to say _, there is darkness in my veins. This wasn't here a year ago. This wasn't here six months ago. But it's here now. Your war put it there. How dare you treat me like I don't understand._ "Do you honestly think that the wizarding community backs this sort of treatment of our prisoners? Do you think  _Harry_  would support this? You are aware, I'm sure, how often torture results in false confessions, aren't you? If you're here talking to me, obviously your grand plan to torture information out of him has failed. Of course it did. Since that is the case, I can only assume that you are doing this for your own sadistic-"

"I know you were classmates with that Death Eater, but you aren't in school anymore, girl. Some things are bigger than—"

The idea that she is angry due to some misplaced sense of nostalgia causes her spine to stiffen. "Mr. Dawlish," she hisses, "I assure you that there is no love lost between your prisoner and myself. Has it ever occurred to you that torturing people for information is inherently wrong, base, and brings us down to the level of those we are trying to fight?"

On the table, the sneakoscope begins to spin, but because it doesn't make a sound, none of them notice it.

But Dawlish has thinned his lips into a cold grin. "Remus mentioned your  _bleeding heart_ , but if you're so clever, what do you think we should do? He's got information. He's  _one of them. He's a bad guy_  and the longer he sits all happy shut up in his comfy cell, the more good guys are dying. So, what do you think, Granger? How should we proceed now?"

"Well, for starters, there is no difference between  _us_  and  _them_  if this is how we act! There is no 'good guy' or 'bad guy' if this is what your war is. I'd recommend you realize that repeating the same method for almost two weeks and expecting a different result each time is utterly pointless and so moronic that it borders on lunatic."

Lupin begins to make a sound like a cross between a sigh and her name but Dawlish raises his meaty left hand to silence him.

"Let's say we've done that now, Granger. What's the next step? Should we try to educate him? Teach him all about how he's been a very, very bad boy? This is the brat who lead Death Eaters into Hogwarts when he was sixteen. His mind's been made up since before any of this started." Dawlish is sneering at her.

She ignores him. "There's got to be something he wants. Offer a trade. He's used to comfortable living. Offer him benefits if he cooperates. Come on, Mr. Dawlish, rack your brains for a few minutes to consider the social implications of your behavior. It shouldn't be too painful, even for you."

"What sort of benefits do you recommend, then?" He counters, ignoring her jab.

She shrugs. "Let him see his friends. We've got Marcus Flint still. Offer to let him see his old school buddy if he tells us what we want."

Dawlish shakes his head. "Won't work."

Her cooling temper flares again. Dawlish is underestimating the power of friendship and that insults her on a personal level. "And why not?"

"He was sharing a cell with Flint and Sheridan Webb two nights ago."

"Why? I thought Azkaban wasn't keen on cell-sharing since the breakout."

He gives her a long look before answering, clearly annoyed at being interrupted, "First of all, that is not supposed to be civilian knowledge and I don't have to justify our actions to a child. Anyway, we thought he'd talk to Webb and Flint. We can get information out of both of them. Show him a bit of the good life before we got back to work on him. Encourage him to talk."

She can't help the disgusted look that crosses her face, "That's sick. That's really, really sick. This is common practice for you people, isn't it? You've got it down to a science."

"I don't hear you complaining when you fall asleep, safe in a warm bed, under our protection. Don't see you getting all upset every time we stop a battle before it even starts. This is the price of freedom,  _girl_." His voice is lowering into growl now. "I have stopped curses and wars that would give you nightmares for the rest of your life. I've seen things that would turn your delicate little stomach."

"So why didn't it work, Mr. Dawlish?" Her voice is getting louder. On the table, the sneakoscope cracks and stops spinning as suddenly as it started. Her hands are curled into fists in her lap. "Why didn't you get your information from Flint and Webb? Didn't they talk?"

Dawlish sneers at her like they've been playing chess and he just saw a brilliant move where she left herself open. "Because the dead don't talk,  _girl._ "

This catches her off guard. "What?" Her eyebrows knit together.

"He killed them. Both of them."

"What? How?" There is a piece missing and she hates her brain for choosing now, of all times, to slide back into the dark.

"He was alone with them for three minutes while the guard changed at midnight. When the fourth shift got there, they reported screaming and a commotion. When they got to the holding cell, Flint was dead."

Her eyes drift down to the cracked sneakoscope. "How did he die?" she asks, and tries not to guess.

"Flint's neck was snapped."

"What happened to Webb?" she asks even though she is not sure she wants to know. She is starting to wonder if curiosity isn't a curse or a sickness inside of her.

"He died on the way to the apparition point. Bled out."

She doesn't have an answer to that.

"That's why we're here, Hermione," says Remus before Dawlish can say anything else. He looks slightly green and more than a little upset.

"Because Webb died? That doesn't make any sense."

"No," says Dawlish, "because now we know what he wants." He leans back in his chair, arms folded across his chest. His face is still red and dark as a thundercloud.

"What?" she asks because she is Hermione Granger and she can't keep herself from asking questions even when she knows she should.

"He spelled it out for us. Literally. He wrote it out in blood on the walls when the guards took Webb out for transport. Like a god damn grocery list. It was disgusting. Blood was all over the cell. Both guards have asked for time off. Medical leave for the rest of the month."

"Then it should be easy," she retorts, "whatever he wrote out, just offer him that if he cooperates."

"That's why we're here, Hermione," Lupin says again.

Dawlish looks very seriously at her, then. All mirth and rage gone from his face, "He wrote out, 'Get Granger'."


	6. The Cell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for implied torture.

**Friday, November 1st. Late.**

It is just past midnight and Hermione is sitting at the table again, eating a bowl of cereal and absent-mindedly practicing a wandless, nonverbal  _lumos_  to herself.  _Lumos!_  she thinks with as much ferocity as she can, and stares at her wand, which she has placed just out of reach. Nothing happens.

 _Lumos!_ the tip of her wand glows faintly, but other than that there's no response.

 _Lumos!_ Nothing.

A safe house in Southampton was raided three days ago, and since then Andromeda's house has seemed more like a meeting center than a quiet home in the country. Hermione is no longer the only one awake at night. There are two wizards sharing a bottle of Ogden's and talking quietly in the living room. It's actually rather nice to have the background noise. In these early morning hours, everything can begin to feel a bit like a terrible dream. Having living, talking people nearby makes everything seem more real.

The chair across from her scrapes back and Mallory Bullstrode sits heavily in it.

"Do you ever sleep?" Grumbles the short-haired witch.

Hermione smiles tiredly. "Sometimes. Do you?"

Mallory chuckles darkly and shrugs noncommittally. "Sure. When I've taken a potion or six."

Hermione winces sympathetically.

An awkward silence falls between them for sixteen ticks of the clock above the doorframe.

"You did well. Last week, I mean. In Galloway." Mallory stares down her long nose at Hermione. Her expression is inscrutable.

"Oh." Hermione can feel her cheeks reddening with pleasure at the compliment. "Thanks."

"That was a good bit of magic."

"It was nothing," she mumbles to the table and her knuckles, "it was only a counterspell that I read about in this book on different types of arcane  _Ingnibus._  It wasn't even that complicated to translate. Anyone with a passing knowledge of runes and Latin could have figured it out."

"Right. Well, I've never studied runes. Thought they were a waste of time in school and they weren't needed for Auror training, so there you go. But, Igni _bus_?" echoes Mallory, her eyebrows rising slightly, "You mean that there's more than one type of firebeast spell?"

Hermione resists the urge to launch into a lecture about the various incarnations of sentient fire magic and instead says, "Yes, but that counterspell should work for most of them."

"Well, that's something. I guess."

They are quiet for a few more moments and then Hermione asks, "What house were you in?" mostly to break the silence.

"Slytherin," is the immediate and unashamed reply.

Hermione makes a face and Mallory laughs. It is a light sound; a girlish giggle that hardly suits her harsh features. "All of you Gryffindors have the same reaction." She runs a hand through her hair and it stands up straight, which reminds Hermione of Harry, which hurts her heart. "We're not all, you know, fawning over the Dark Lord."

Hermione narrows her eyes.

"Oh, don't look at me like that."

"Fear of the name—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know, but you don't have to look at me like I'm going to hex you into next Tuesday. I'm a half-blood, you know. They wouldn't want me, anyway."

"Volde—"

"Yeah, but I'm a pretty big fan of my mum, so all this 'away with the muggles' rubbish doesn't sit well with me." She scrunches her features in a way that reminds Hermione immediately of Crookshanks. Hermione finds herself liking this girl more and more by the second.

"Are you related to Millicent Bulstrode?" Hermione asks.

Mallory grins. "Yeah. She's my baby sister."

"She and Pansy Parkinson were close, weren't they?"

Mallory winces, "Yeah, they were. It came as quite a shock when she sided with her father, you know. She used to spend holidays with us before all of this started. The rest of my family's in hiding, of course, and my sister asked Pansy to come with her. It was a serious blow to Milly when she didn't even answer the owl."

Hermione feels a new and unexpected pity for Millicent Bulstrode unfurling in her chest.

"I'm sorry," she says simply, "I didn't know."

Mallory smiles gently, "Of course not. You Gryffindors have always tended to keep to yourself. Anyway, about that counter-curse."

"What about it?"

"Can you teach it to me?"

"Of course," Hermione is just glad that all her reading is turning out to be useful and she's more than eager for the conversation to turn away from school days.

"Great," Mallory's chair scrapes the floor as she stands, "Let's go."

"Now?" Hermione had assumed this was a hypothetical request for some yet-undetermined point in the future and not to be executed at twelve-twenty-four in the morning.

"Sure." Mallory gives a one-shouldered shrug. "I'm not going to sleep anytime soon. Are you?"

Hermione puts her empty bowl in the sink and picks up her wand. "I guess not. Let's go."

* * *

**Tuesday, November 5th. Morning.**

"Why do you actually have to go?" Ginny asks watching Hermione in the mirror from her own bed. "Yourself, I mean."

"I already told you," Hermione sighs as she attempts to tame her hair back from her face and into a tight bun.  _Don't give him anything to grab hold of, Granger_ , Dawlish had warned the day before.  _You AREN'T going to get close enough for him to grab you, but if you muck up badly enough, the fewer handholds you give him, the better._  "They tried that. Polyjuiced an Auror to look like me. He didn't buy it."

"I'll be with her, Ginny." Mallory is seated on Hermione's bed. "Well, at least as long as I can. Dawlish thinks Malfoy's going to want to talk with you alone." She waggles her eyebrows as though she's just said something scandalous instead of something more than a little upsetting.

"Grand." Ginny rolls her eyes, "Brilliant. Leave Hermione Granger with a crazy guy who killed the last two people he was left alone with. Not to mention that he is a Death Eater, an asshole, and a—"

"I'm not going to be in the cell with him," Hermione sighs and gives up on smoothing out her hair. She would very much like a bottle of Sleekeazy's but hair products, and cosmetics in general, are difficult to buy and the few products available are so far out of her price range it isn't even funny. All potions ingredients are in short supply these days. Death Eaters take what they can when they want it and the Order buys the rest, which means there is little left over for unnecessary indulgences. She does her best with a wet comb and manual labor. It isn't enough but it will have to do.

"You should just cut it," suggests Mallory cheerfully from the bed. "It's so much easier. And you've got a cute face. You could pull it off. Short hair, I mean."

* * *

Dawlish is waiting for them when Mallory and Hermione walk into the kitchen. He looks her over once, nods sharply, and pulls a wad of cloth out of his pocket. He unwraps a spiny looking seashell.

"We've got a minute or two before it activates," he tells them, checking his wristwatch. "So let's go over a few things before we get there. We're going to be met at the apparition point by two guards who will escort us into the compound. Under no circumstances are you to wander off on your own, Granger," he gives her a hard look. "And try not to give the guards who meet us your speech about interrogation techniques. These witches and wizards deal with bullshit every day of their god damned lives and they're going out of their way to show us around."

Hermione opens her mouth to tell him that the prisoners that are being tortured almost certainly have it harder than their guards, but Mallory elbows her sharply in the side and so she holds her tongue.

"They'll collect your wand and run some positive ID tests just to be safe, and then they'll take you to the holding cell. Again, no bleeding heart antics, Granger. They'll just waste time. You'll have half an hour to talk, but you can leave whenever you want if you start to get twitchy. Just don't, for the love of Merlin, get within arm's reach of him. Ask him the questions we talked about, and then get out of there. We don't know what he's capable of or what he wants from you. This is a  _preliminary meeting_. We  _don't_  negotiate with terrorists, Granger, so don't ask him what he wants in exchange for his cooperation." He glances at his watch. "Right, time to go. Everyone, get a finger on the murex."

"The what, Dawlish?" Tonks is suddenly leaning against the doorframe. Her hair is bubblegum pink today.

Hermione and Mallory obediently put their fingers on the shell in Dawlish's palm.

"The shell. The shell is called a murex. It's a Lace Murex." the Auror growls, "And what are you doing here, Tonks?"

"Came to have a chat with my mum and figured I'd see our brave interrogators off. Since when do you know about seashells?"

Tonks' cheeks are pink and she has a large mug of tea in one hand, and Hermione's mind alights on the change. "I thought you preferred coffee, Tonks?" she asks before she can stop herself.

The smile widens on Tonks' face and she looks like she is about to say something when Hermione feels the pull behind her navel and then she is gone in a whirl of color.

* * *

The apparition point is, apparently, only above water at low tide. When they arrive at the island estate of Azkaban, they found themselves standing thigh-deep in ice-cold water, and all three at once begin splashing loudly toward the waiting figures on the distant shore.

Everything on the island is gray. The great squat structure of Azkaban is a dark gray smear across a smudged gray sky, surrounded by water that is such a deep gray that it is almost back. It looks like a painting with all the color sucked out. On either side of her, even the ruddy-faced Dawlish and Mallory's appraising blue eyes look washed out and dull.

When they reach the pebbled beach, they are shivering.

"Right this way, sir," says one of the guards to Dawlish with a sharp salute. He is a tall man in a very simple, dark gray robe standing next to another tall man in an identical very simple, dark gray robe.

There is no time to cast a warming charm before they are lead indoors. The building seems much smaller on the inside than it looked on the outside. They walk single-file down a narrow hallway to a small room where Hermione sits, still shivering, in a cold metal chair. One of the guards (Hermione can't tell them apart) locks the door behind them while the other sits behind the desk in front of Hermione's chair. Mallory and Dawlish hand their wants to the guard.

When he stretches out a hand for Hermione's, she hesitates.

"Hermione," whispers Mallory.

Slowly, Hermione slides her wand into the outstretched hand and watches as it is dropped into a thick manila envelope with her name already written on the front. As soon as the envelope is closed, it vanishes.

"This way, please," the second guard says, as he sticks a thick iron key directly into a patch of gray wall that is completely indistinguishable from every other section of wall. A door materializes and swings open with a scream of protest.

The guard behind the desk stands and leads the way. Mallory gives Hermione a half smile and gestures for Hermione to go ahead of her as Dawlish follows on the guard's heels. Hermione walks through silently between Mallory and Dawlish. Once they are all through, the guard behind them closes the door and locks them in.

Hermione wonders how many doors like this they passed as they headed down that narrow hallway and waited in that dark room. She doesn't ask.

The hall around them is dark, lit by glowing bricks in the wall, spaced every few feet and radiating an eerie blue-gray light. It's so narrow they are forced to walk in single-file and Dawlish's shoulders sometimes brush one wall or another. As they head down the passage, deeper into the gray, Hermione notices the sound of rushing water getting gradually louder.

Hermione is just wondering where the thundering of falling water might be coming from when Dawlish walks through a sheet of water that she had not noticed until Dawlish was already disappearing through it.

"Go on," Mallory whispers, giving her a small push on her back.

The water chills her to the bone.

She's still ringing water out of her ponytail when Mallory emerges behind her, looking wet and annoyed. "I'll never get used to that," Mallory hisses.

"What's it for?" Hermione murmurs back.

"It's to dispel illusions and so they can keep track of us. We'll leave footprints wherever we go while we're in here."

Hermione glances down and, sure enough, there are two sets of footprints ahead of where she stands.

* * *

"If anything happens that makes you even remotely uncomfortable, loosen your grip on this," the guard recites as he holds a ball out to her. "It will lock down the cell, effectively ending communication, and we will be alerted."

She takes it. It is soft and warm, about the size of a baseball and made of soft leather. Like everything else in this terrible place, it is gray. Her fingers close around it.

"Do you have a comfortable grip on the ball?" the guard asks in a bored tone.

She nods.

"Just don't drop it," adds Mallory.

"What happens if I drop it?"

"The entire prison goes into lockdown mode," answers Dawlish, "which we would like to avoid if we would like to leave this week."

"Ah."

"You will be provided with a chair. Please sit in the chair and please refrain from leaving the chair once you are seated. The prisoner will be able to hear you and see you. The prisoner will be unable to approach the bars. Do you have any questions?"

"No."

"There will be a line painted on the floor in front of the chair. Please do not pass the line on the floor. Please do not move the chair, pass anything to the prisoner, or approach any of the walls. Do you have any questions?"

"No."

"When you are ready to leave, loosen your grip on the ball or transfer it to your other hand. If you do not signal for termination of the meeting before the allocated half hour, at the end of the allotted half hour, we will come in to remove you from the meeting room. Do you have any questions?"

"No."

They stop at a bare stretch of wall, where a different key causes yet another door to melt out of the stone.

"Please proceed."

The ball is clenched loosely in her right her fist as she walks through. The door closes behind her, the tumblers scream back into place, and then she is staring at a blank patch of wall. She clears her throat, turns, and walks in.

There is a chair in the center of the room and she approaches it. Beyond the chair, there is a thick black line painted on the dark gray flagstones of the floor. Her eyes trail down the room and into the cell. The cell is the same width as the rest of the room; about eight feet across and maybe eight feet deep. On one side of the cell is a simple cot with a mass of blankets on it. She thinks the cell is empty at first, but then the blankets shift and rise to a sitting position.

"Hello, Malfoy."

He doesn't answer at first but this doesn't surprise her. The lights in the wall don't give her a good look into his cell but she can tell his eyes are shining in her direction.

She sighs heavily, sits in the chair, and crosses her arms and legs. "We only have half an hour to talk, you know," she points out, "It won't do either of us any good if you just sit there not answering me." He scoots to the edge of his mattress, into the light. At last she can see his face. It is dark with fresh bruises.

"Did you break your nose again when you fell at Grimmauld place, or this newer than that?"

He reaches up to his face and touches his nose like he'd forgotten it was there at all, but he still doesn't answer.

She breathes out sharply through her nose. "This is absolutely ludicrous," she mumbles, more to herself than to anyone else. She is still shivering.

His eyes dart away from her then, and his face turns toward one corner. He nods at the corner like he is greeting someone else, and then turns back to her. "Hello, Granger," he says around a mouthful of still-broken teeth.

Insanely, she thinks she should tell him about the teeth in her trunk. Maybe she should return them to him or at least let him know where they are. Clearly, she is more cold, tired, and stressed that she initially thought. "Why did you want to see me, Malfoy?" she asks instead.

"Because I have what you want and it looks suspicious if I am honest without making any demands."

"Oh, please. I don't buy for a second that you only wanted to see me so that you look more honest. Don't embarrass us both with your lies."

He grins at her through the bars and in the shadows, he looks like a beast or a monster. A boogeyman. Something that goes bump in the night.  _Oh grandmother,_  she thinks to herself because she is tired and cold and maybe even a little unsettled _, what a big smile you have_. "Cleverest witch of our age."

But by the way he says it, she isn't sure that he is talking about her or someone else.

"If you want my help, then meet my demands." His eyes are unfocused and he whispers something under his breath.

Hermione expected this and her answer is prepared. "We don't negotiate with terrorists," she says without any real passion or conviction. It sounds just as stupid, pigheaded, and counterproductive now as it did when Dawlish made her repeat it back to him yesterday.

"Then all your friends will die," he replies simply. "I assure you that I do not ask for anything that cannot be given freely."

"So what are your demands?"

His lips move silently for a while, and he looks like he is trying to sort out what words he wants to use out loud; like he needs to try them out before he can give them to her. Finally, after a painfully long duration in which Hermione can only watching him mutter to himself like a madman, he says: "Exoneration. A full pardon."

She almost drops the ball. "You're asking quite a lot, Malfoy."

"You will learn, Granger, that I will always get what I want. Where's Potter?" The tone is stronger now, more accusing.

The question catches her off guard. This is the first time he has mentioned Harry and it is the last thing she expected him to do. In her head, she can hear the echo of Dawlish saying  _Don't let him ask questions. He'll see it as you relinquishing power if he gets to ask questions_. "Why do you ask?"

"Because it is uncharacteristic of him to leave his favorite little mudblood all alone in the big bad world, and this is the third time I have seen you without the Boy Who Will Not Die. So, where is he?"

She tilts her chin up defiantly and is glad that he gave her a way to avoid the question. "I won't be called that, Malfoy."

"Why ever not? You have never been bothered by it like the Weasley fool. Is he still hanging on to your ankles or have he and Potter finally come forward with their scandalous and illicit affair? A word, a name. Fear of the name, fear of the name, or have you forgotten the old fool's tattoo?"

She stares at him, open-mouthed. So he really is mad, then. She can't say she's sorry he's been unhinged, given what an ass he was before, and she doesn't miss his personality, but it is strange to see someone she thought she knew so visibly undone.

"Gaping suits fish and morons. Lets the flies in. But perhaps you are uncultured enough not to know that, Granger."

And just like that, he is back. She actually stands then and takes a step forward because she is going to hex him for being such a sorry—

"Not past the line, Granger."

She pauses at his warning tone.

"And stop reaching for a wand that isn't there. You can't curse me with empty pockets and you'll only look a fool for trying. Don't embarrass us both with your idiocy. We only have half an hour to talk, you know."

It hits her like a slap across the face that he is parroting her own words back at her. "Right," she replied as coolly as she can, "then I'd like some information."

"What will you give me in return?"

"I don't have to give you anything." Another scripted line. When Dawlish watches the memory later, he should be pleased.

"Bleeding heart Granger doesn't want to help for the sake of helping?"

"I don't have a reason to help you."

"But what if I need rescuing? I'll come quietly, I assure you."

The question is asked innocently enough, but it hits her like a slap in the face. It is her fault that he is in this situation. She knew it from the beginning but now there is no doubt that he knows it, too. He blames her. Her daring rescue in the wood was worse than worthless; he seems even worse off now than he was before she intervened. "Ask for something specific," she grinds out. Dawlish will kill her for this, but she can't help asking. "No promises."

He thinks for a moment. "Teeth," he says eventually.

For one crazy moment, she thinks that he means the teeth that are still in her trunk but then he lifts his hand to his mouth and runs his index and middle fingers across his top row of broken teeth. His fingers are long and thin like spider legs.

"I cannot articulate the coordinates Dawlish wants without them."

"So, you're pretty much not going to tell me anything until you get your way."

"Cleverest witch of our age."

"Then we're done here," and she stands to go.

"But we are not yet out of time, Granger," he says softly. "I'm sure you are dying for some intellectual stimulation."

"That's presumptuous of you," she snorts.

"It was nice of your friend to come with you," he says suddenly, coldly, and she pauses mid-turn.

He can only mean Mallory, but how does he know that she is waiting? Also, how does he know that Mallory is her friend? Hermione isn't even sure of that title herself. She can't  _ask_ , of course. Even if she knew how to wrap her mouth around a question as big as that, she doesn't know if she wants the answer. But she is Hermione Granger, and not knowing is even worse. "How do you know?" she asks. It isn't a good question, but it's the best one she has.

She sees him then as a shark, swimming in languid circles outside of the diver's cage, or a lion outside of a safari jeep. Either way, he's waiting for her to come out. Either way, it's only a matter of time before he gets his way. The predator smiles a sharp-toothed smile. "It's as plain as day. Just the same as I can smell your fear. Your shampoo. The coffee you drank this morning. I'm not blind. I'm not deaf. I'm not dumb. It's so boring in here; there's nothing to do but pay attention. Pay attention to anyone who comes in here or wherever I go when they take me out for walks and talks. Brand Rickman has a new daughter. Wish him congratulations on my behalf on your way out. He hasn't been in to see me in days. Galba has a trouble with smoking. Like a chimney. Like a pyre. So tell me about the outside world. It's dull now. If a dog bites, they stop taking it out for walks and talks. So talk with me so that I may walk with you."

It isn't really an answer at all, but what did he mean by  _walks and talks_? Does he mean torture? Guilt twists like a knife in her stomach. "What do you want to know, Malfoy?"

"What month is it?"

She considers lying to him, but what is the advantage to that? He might be testing her. It seems the sort of thing he would do just to see if she'll tell him the truth and maybe she'll feel a bit less guilty if she gives him this much. "It's November."

"November," he echoes, "It's November." His eyes close and his head tilts back like he is savoring the taste of it in his mouth. When she shifts in her seat, his head snaps back down to her, "what day of the week is it, Granger?"

"First, one of mine." She snatches the chance before it is gone, "Why did you want to see me, of all people?"

His head tilts lazily back towards her, "Ah, now that is the question that is first on your tongue, of course. But I counter with this: Whose sense of fair play and mercy should I trust? Certainly not a ministry Auror's. Potter listens to you, councilwoman, and his approval is a war. So why  _not_  you? Why ever not you? Always you? And it  _is_ always you. Every time. And then there is the added benefit of the indisputable truth of your dear friend. Proof of who you are. Besides," his eyes narrow like he has caught her in a trap that she still cannot see, "I am in need of rescuing."

She considers this for a moment. It is disappointing to know there isn't a bigger, more important reason, but maybe her importance to Harry is reason enough. She nods once. "It's a Tuesday."

"A Tuesday in November. November, the Tuesdayth."

"Malfoy," she asks and when he mutters to himself instead of answering she tries again, louder, "Malfoy."

But he is lost to her now, she knows, gone into his own mind and murmuring  _November november november_  like it is his name. Like it is something he will forget if he ceases to speak it for even a moment.

She shifts the ball to her other hand. He stops muttering to himself and he looks her in the face and his gaze doesn't waver. "Don't check the corners, Granger," he hisses so quietly that she has to hold her breath to catch the words, "I don't think he wants to be seen."

Her eyes, naturally, swing from one corner to another, but there is nothing there. Nothing anywhere. Nothing but shadow and the same, gray bricks.

The door swings open. Malfoy's eyes follow the guards as they approach her chair, his expression flat and his gaze is hard.  _Grandmother, what big eyes you have_. She stands and walks toward the door and ignores the prickling of his stare on the back of her head.

The guards lead her, Mallory, and Dawlish through a door that materializes out of a blank stretch of wall and into a separate waiting room. There is a stiff looking couch against one wall and two large chairs and a potted plant against the other. Hermione gets her wand back from one of the guards and Dawlish immediately hands her a little bottle. She realizes that this is so she can siphon out her memory. The action is anticipated—they discussed it before any of this started—but it still catches her off guard. She hoped she would have a bit longer before the events of the day were only a faded image in her mind. Dawlish is watching her expectantly.

"Well I'm not going to do it with you watching," she huffs out.

He looks like he wants to argue with her, but with a grumble to himself, he turns his back on her. "Don't take too long," he growls and stomps out to join Mallory and the guards.

She pulls the long strand of memory out by the tip of her wand and only spares a brief moment to herself to watch the swirling condense before Mallory sticks her head in. "Hermione? Dawlish is getting antsy. I think he has to use the loo."

Dawlish's response is loud and vulgar.

"Well if you don't," Mallory quips, "then I have utterly no idea why you are acting like such a child."

* * *

They follow their own footprints out in a single file line again, and Hermione keeps her eyes glued to the floor, trying to match her footprints to those that she made on the way in. It is difficult to accomplish because her prints are merged in places with five other sets, but she can tell which ones are hers in most places. The second set of prints she identifies are Mallory's. They are small and pointed inwards. Third are Dawlish's, wide and flat, unevenly spaced because of his limp. The two guards must be the fourth and fifth ones she sees because they have identical patterns. The sixth set of prints is larger than the others and wider spaced. This is when she realizes that there are only five of them walking down the corridor.


	7. The Thing Behind the Glass

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for implied torture.

**Friday, November 8th. Early evening.**

"Why not?" she demands. Her hair is expanding around her face and her cheeks are heating up but she doesn't notice and wouldn't care even if she did. "I went last time and it was  _fine!"_

"Hermione, please relax." Lupin raises his hands in supplication. He is seated at the kitchen table. Dawlish is leaning against the counter, his arms folded across his chest and his legs spread in a battle stance. The window behind him is pitch black, even though it's only just after five. The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting colder.

"And a fat load of good you'll be to us if you decide to get yourself killed or captured!" Dawlish yells back. "Don't you understand? We need you for negotiations now!"

She is still standing in the doorway, where she has been for the last five minutes as the conversation has gotten increasingly out of control. She tried to be polite. She tried to  _rationally_  and  _calmly_ explain to Dawlish that she didn't understand why she wasn't invited to the planning meeting since she was as useful as the rest of them.

The last of the Aurors who were spending the evening in the kitchen have decided they would rather be anywhere else, carrying half-eaten sandwiches and scalding cups of tea off in hasty retreat. Dawlish is famed for his temper and no one who knows him wants to be in the blast radius when he goes off. Hermione, on the other hand, doesn't give a fig what his reputation says. He is being stupid and she cannot abide stupidity. "You'll need me more if they use the  _manticora_  again! And I thought you didn't negotiate with  _terrorists_ , or has Malfoy been upgraded to just plain old torture victim? It seems to me—"

"Bulstrode can do the wandwork if it comes to that," Dawlish barrels through the beginning of her diatribe. "But they won't be using it anymore since it didn't work in their favor last time!"

Hermione feels a quick sting of betrayal at this. But no, the analytic side of her brain pushes back, of course Mallory can fend off the fire beasts as well as she can. What Dawlish is saying makes sense, logically, but she can't stand the idea of being out of action for much longer. It has been three days since the last time she left the house and there isn't even anything new to read. Rage flares up again and this time she hangs on to it. She is starting to feel alive again. Her brain is slowly spinning back into rotation. "And what about Malfoy? Nothing to say to that? Your silence indicates that you agree he's just a torture victim at this point."

"Hermione," Lupin places a hand on her elbow, "Please. We're not asking you to sit here and do nothing. We need good wands on healing duty, too."

Dawlish grumbles something but she doesn't hear him. There is a shape moving just beyond the window behind Dawlish. It's only a dark outline against the inky black, but she is sure that it is there, pressed up against the glass. Looking in at them.

She acts without thinking. Her wand is in her hand and she shouts "Protego!" just as the glass explodes inward.

The power of her spell blasts Dawlish backward and into a wall, but as soon as it happens Lupin and Dawlish have their wands out and Aurors are rushing back into the room, pouring around her, wands at the ready and curses already flying. Spells are thrown out into the darkness, illuminating Andromeda's lawn in green and red light. A group runs out to check the lawn, but they find nothing. It is chalked up to an accident and Dawlish's temper.

When the confusion dies down, Dawlish walks up to her, "Fast reflexes, girl," he commends, "I suppose I let my temper go. It wouldn't be the first time I...lost control like that. It wasn't very professional of me." He looks embarrassed and still angry. "My orders stand, but I shouldn't have..." he growls, looking for a word, "lost it like that. I'm sorry." The words seem to taste bad in his mouth, but he spits them out anyway.

She nods mutely.

Dawlish claps her on the shoulder and edges past her into the living room to talk to a group of Aurors who are waiting for him there. She lowers herself shakily into one of the chairs. The window has been repaired and she is alone in the kitchen. When she rubs her hands over her face, she realizes that they are shaking and so she clasps them around her wand. She rubs small circles on its base with her thumb so hard that the wood beneath her fingers bends gently.

She knows it wasn't Dawlish who made the window break. It wasn't even anything in the kitchen. It was something outside. She knows this because, for half a heartbeat, she saw it. A long and sharp ink-black hand reaching for Dawlish as the glass shattered around it.

But maybe she doesn't know. The mind invents all sorts of things under extreme stress. She sighs heavily. Maybe it's a good thing she isn't going on the mission tomorrow. Maybe she needs the break more than she realized.

* * *

Sometime after midnight, Mallory slides into the seat across from her.

"Hey," she says as she places her cup gingerly on the table. She glances at Hermione's face. "Ok, I know Dawlish can be scary when he's mad, but he gets over it pretty quick."

"Hm?" Hermione looks up from her hands, confused by Mallory's words.

"I mean, you don't have to look so scared. I heard about the window thing," she nods at the window, "but I mean, there was this one time where he slammed his mug down so hard on the table that the handle broke and he punched the table. Broke two knuckles I think. It was hilarious. So, just relax, yeah? These things happen."

"Oh," Hermione realizes now that Mallory must think she is afraid of Dawlish or something else equally ridiculous. "Oh, no. That's not," but she trails off. How can she explain the hand she saw reaching through the window towards Dawlish without sounding absolutely crazy? The Aurors searched the yard completely afterward, and they hadn't found a thing. Mallory is looking curiously at her.

"What?" Mallory prods gently, "What happened?" She leans forward slightly.

"Just before Dawlish—"

"Ah! Shit!" Mallory jumps to her feet, slapping at her wrist.

"What? What is it?" Hermione is on her feet, too, and her wand is waving blindly around the kitchen.

"Ow! Fuck!" Mallory inhales sharply through her teeth and pulls her hand away from her wrist, revealing a deep gash, glimmering as it fills with dark blood. "I was just sitting there and—shit that stings!—I must've snagged a sliver or something!"

Together they glance at the table and, sure enough, there is a thick piece of wood about as long as Hermione's pinky sticking up sharply.

"Fuck. I'm going to go mend this," grumbles Mallory, "Bad luck to bleed before a spat."

And then she is gone. Hermione looks long and hard at the table and then, following a hunch, she gets down on all fours and crawls under the table. It is dark underneath it, save for the light shining through a thin hole. She sticks her finger into the hole, and the wood around it is smooth, like someone punched a metal nail through the wood and took it out quickly. Quickly, she crawls out and looks at the chunk of wood sticking up. She had been sitting at this table for more than an hour now and would have sworn there weren't any irregularities in the wood.

The hair on the nape of her neck rises as she feels eyes on her. She whirls, but she is alone in the kitchen, at least as far as she can tell. Slowly, a new suspicion begins to form, but it is so outlandish and strange, that she will need to test the theory further before it becomes a true hypothesis. She rubs her thumb over the base of her wand and points it at the table. "Reparo!" she thinks, and she is rewarded with a small snap as the wood retreats back into place. 

* * *

**Saturday, November 9th.**

Justin Finch-Fletchley is seated across the table from her. He looks pale to the point of turning green and every few seconds his Adam's apple bobs up and down as he swallows dryly. He is scared, Hermione knows this, but she is still too bitter about not going herself to want to offer him much comfort. This is the first time Hermione has seen him since he was on fire. He looks completely fine. Even his hair has been regrown and falls in soft golden curls around his face. It's hair she would have been jealous of had she been prone to that sort of vanity.

"It's a nice day, isn't it?" He says eventually. His voice wavers.

Hermione glances out the window. It is just past noon, and the sun is shining but it is deceptively cold, which she knows because she tried to sit outside with Crookshanks that morning. After about five minutes, he yowled to go back in. "Lovely," she answers dismissively and sips her tea.

"Have you read anything interesting lately?" He asks.

He must be very desperate for distraction if he's willing to ask her about what she's been reading, and so she takes pity on him. "Quite a lot. How about you? Read anything of note?"

He shakes his head and laughs nervously. "I'm not much of a reader, I guess. I do like movies, though."

"Oh," she says because she figures she should respond even if she doesn't want to.

"Yeah. Like, muggle films, you know? Of course muggle films. Anyway, I used to really like watching war movies. You know what I mean? But I never thought…never once…" and his voice cracks.

She reaches across the table and lays her hand over his. It is cold and sweaty, but she ignores the unpleasantness. "It's going to be fine, Justin.  _You_  are going to be fine. You've done this before. You know what it's like."

"Only once," he confesses, and he looks like he's going to cry, "and you know how well that went."

She squeezes his hand and is still trying to think of how to answer when Mallory tromps into the room. Her short hair has been brushed flat and her lips are dark red. Hermione wonders, absently, why she is wearing makeup.

"Come on, kid," she says and places a hand on Justin's shoulder. "It's showtime." She glances over at Hermione and offers a lopsided smile. "Hold down the fort, and with any luck, we won't see you until tomorrow."

Hermione nods in response. "Good luck," she says.

"Won't need it!" Mallory sings out and unwraps their port key and she and Justin vanish.

A few minutes later, Ginny wanders into the kitchen and takes the seat that Justin just vacated. The clock above the kitchen sink ticks loudly and Ginny chews her nails.

The sky is turning orange when Andromeda enters the kitchen. Today she is dressed in simple black robes and her long blonde hair is pulled back from her face in a severe bun. "Let's set up."

While Ginny and Hermione push the kitchen table against one wall, Andromeda places a large wicker basket on the table. The three of them unpack bandages and salves and neatly labeled bottles. The four potions that Hermione places on the wooden table are all  _Essence of Dittany_. Ginny removes a bottle of  _Skele-Gro_ and two blood replenishing potions. The rest are three calming draughts and a single bottle of Wiggenweld Potion.

"Be careful with these," Andromeda warns them both, "That's the last Wiggenweld we've got."

When the medical station is set up in the kitchen, the three witches stare apprehensively at the back door.

"Now what do we do?" Ginny asks.

"We wait," Andromeda's voice is gentle, but the lines in her face betray her nerves, "and we prepare to receive either the injured or word from Lupin."

"And you do this every time?" Ginny asks incredulously.

"Every time," Andromeda replies, and for the first time, Hermione sees her shoulders sag like the weight of the world rests there. Hermione realizes, then, that Andromeda's daughter and Andromeda's husband are both out fighting. If all goes well, she won't see them until tomorrow. The only way she will see them sooner is if something goes wrong. 

* * *

Ginny is dozing at the table, Andromeda is knitting, and Hermione is reading at 11:37 that evening, when Lupin's Patronus bursts through the wall.

"We are safe," it says, "Dawlish will want to talk with Hermione in the morning and Tonks sends her love," before vanishing into the air.

Andromeda lets out a sharp sniff, Ginny relaxes against the table, and Hermione closes her eyes, thanking god or good luck that the news wasn't worse. 

* * *

**Wednesday, November 13th.**

Hermione transfers the teeth from the pocket of her jeans to a pillbox her mother gave her years ago and then slips the pillbox into her beaded bag where she knows she won't lose it.

She wears boots and casts a water repelling charm on herself. She wraps a winter cloak around her shoulders. She doesn't comment on the  _whelk_  that's their port key today. She slogs through shallow water toward the squat, gray monolith. She follows the guards into the long brick structure. She walks in single-file between Dawlish and Mallory. She hands her wand over without being asked. She walks down another narrow hallway. She thinks about how fortunate it is that she doesn't mind narrow places. She follows Dawlish through the waterfall. She is soaked to the bone again because the water repelling charm doesn't last through the Thief's Downfall and the winter cloak is heavy with all the water it absorbs.

They stop at a bare stretch of wall, and she still can't see any difference between this patch and the rest of the wall stretching in either direction. One of the guards—and she can't even tell if it's the same set as her last visit—holds the small gray ball out to her again. "If anything happens that makes you even remotely uncomfortable, loosen your grip on this. It will lock down the cell, effectively ending communication, and we will be alerted."

"Alright." She takes the ball. It is soft and it is warm and it feels familiar in her hand.

"Do you have a comfortable grip on the ball?" the guard asks in a bored tone.

"Yes."

"You will be provided with a chair. Please sit in the chair and please refrain from leaving the chair once you are seated. The prisoner will be able to hear you and see you. The prisoner will be unable to approach the bars. Do you have any questions?"

"No."

"There will be a line painted on the floor in front of the chair. Please do not pass the line on the floor. Please do not move the chair, pass anything to the prisoner, or approach any of the walls. Do you have any questions?"

"No."

"When you are ready to leave, loosen your grip on the ball or transfer it to your other hand. If you do not signal for termination of the meeting before the allocated half hour, at the end of the allotted half hour, we will come in to remove you from the meeting room. Do you have any questions?"

"No."

The door creaks open, and, "Please proceed," says the guard.

Before she can walk through it, Dawlish puts a hand on her shoulder. "Don't forget what we talked about." His warning is barely more than a whisper.

She nods and enters the room.

At the end of the short hall, Malfoy is sitting up on his cot, his legs planted firmly on the floor and his hands laced in his lap. He watches, silent, as she sits down in the chair. "Hello, Malfoy," she sighs.

He doesn't reply. Doesn't even blink. He just stares at her with his flat, pale eyes. There is more hair on his head than there was the last time she was here, and it shines like a faint golden halo around his head. His left eye is so swollen and bruised that it cannot open. The cheek under it is sunken sharply in. His nose is still crookedly smashed against his face. She swallows hard and looks away from him.

"It worked," she says next, because they only have half an hour and she isn't going to waste any more time that she has to. "Whatever you told Dawlish, it worked."

He nods once and closes his good eye.

"We—"

He raises a finger to his lips and she falls silent, very aware of the sound of her breath going in and out and the way the sodden fabric of her cloak shifts as she moves restlessly. After a few moments, though, she can hear it, too: It is not a sound, exactly. It is more the absence of sound, or the movement of air around a body. Perhaps it is in her imagination but she feels precisely the way she felt alone in the kitchen the week before. Fear prickles along her arms, raising goose pimples. She wonders if he knows something she doesn't, but before she can figure out how to phrase the question, he speaks.

"Hello, Granger," he says. She jumps in her seat. His voice is rusty from disuse, but the words are crisp. "I did not mean to frighten you."

The words don't sound like an apology at all, but she wouldn't have expected one anyway. "We want to know where else he might be."

"I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific than that, Granger." Other than the movement of his mouth when he speaks, he is completely still. If she did not see his lips open and shut, she would have doubted even that. His good eye remains fixed on her and it does not waver. He is waiting for her next move.

She folds her arms across her chest. "Kingsley Shacklebolt. The Minister of Magic." He knows that's why she's here, and so this must be intentional. He is playing dumb for some reason, but she doesn't know what. He's had a week to think about this, probably, to figure out what he's going to say next to her, and she won't let him stay ahead of her like this.

"Ah yes. The muggle-lover." If there was any emotion at all behind the words, she would be able to at least guess what he is thinking, but he sounds like he is reading off of a script and she doesn't know what he means. Is it a compliment? Is it an insult? Does it make a difference at all? She wants to ask, but Dawlish told her not to show any interest in anything he says if she can help it.  _We don't want him feeling like he has something you want. You are a mouthpiece, Granger. Nothing else. Don't let him think otherwise for a moment._ His lips move silently like he is talking to himself, but they are moving too quickly for her to make out words.

Her lips thin and she grinds her teeth. "Where is he?" she barks out. "There weren't any prisoners at the house in Dorchester. Only a dozen low-level recruits. We will find the minister. Give us another address."

"Do you like my teeth, Granger?" he asks and his mouth widens, exposing two rows of white, rounded teeth. Healed teeth. A full set. The gesture isn't a smile and she thinks about a dog flashing a snarl before it attacks.

"We need another address," she repeats, because Dawlish warned her not to get off topic.

"The teeth, Granger," he edges forward on his mattress, leaning toward her, into the light. He holds a hand before his face like he is framing his mouth for her to see, but all she notices is that there are no fingernails on his left hand. Only black scabs.

She lowers her eyes. "Very nice, Malfoy."

"Indeed. The wonders of modern magic never cease to amaze. It was dittany, of course. Rinsed my mouth out with Dittany. It will be better. Can't grow them out, rinse your mouth out with Dittany, it'll be better." He smiles then, the corners of his mouth pulling up in an almost-human expression, exposing all of his perfect, intact teeth

She is losing him again. His eyes are alive, glimmering with a light that is not at all sane. "Malfoy, we need another address. Malfoy!" she says sharply.

His eyes drift languidly to hers, gray and unseeing, flat as a mirror. "Cleverest witch of our age."

"An address, Malfoy. If you aren't going to cooperate, I'm going to have to leave," she warns. "We have half an hour to talk, but if they look through my memories and see that I'm not getting anywhere with you, they might not let me come back."

He waves a hand sluggishly before his face, "They have no choice. It is you or the silence and life is very long in silence and your Muggle-Lover-Minister does not have a long silence." His grin is almost drunken, sloppy on his features. "I have a long silence. I have the longest silence there is. You will come back because they are desperate for a sign."

She sighs and glances down at the ball in her hand, but before she can change her grip on it, he says sharply, "Where's Potter? Where's the beacon of hope in these dark times?"

The question is so different from his previous tone that she almost answers but catches herself before she makes the mistake. "Malfoy, we need an address."

"And what should I ask for in return, pray? What will you give me?"

 _Maybe for them not to tear out your fingernails. Maybe for them to fix your nose._ "I can't answer that, Malfoy." but her gaze drifts back to the scabbed over nailbeds.

His eyes follow hers down and he raises his hand before his face like he is examining his fingernails. "No, I think not, but it is an idea. I want a newspaper. A  _Daily Prophet_. From November. Is it still November?" His gaze does not leave his hand.

"Yes, Malfoy," she says slowly.

"Is it still a Tuesday?"

She pauses before answering. Does this count as too much information? She looks at him then. Really looks at him. He is thin, thinner than she ever remembers him. He is in his own head more than he is in the world. His gray Azkaban robes are stained in places with what looks like it might be dried blood or dirt. His nose is still crooked and half his face is sunken in but his posture is rigid like he is still holding a crown on his badly beaten head. She set out to rescue him from Death Eaters and now he is being tortured for information in a prison. Some savior she turned out to be. If he was not in need of rescuing when she found him, he certainly is now. This is the least that she can do. "No, Malfoy," she says eventually, "It's Wednesday now. We last talked eight days ago."

He drops his hand back to his lap and pierces her with a sharp stare. "Do you pity me, Granger?"

And there is the ghost of his old self in the words. Clearly articulated and condescending, a shadow of the boy who tortured her at Hogwarts, the boy who taught her what death looked like. He was responsible for the death of the greatest wizard she will ever know. He killed her idea of what the world could be. Yes, he has suffered, but it has been his own wrongdoing that has brought this down on him, and still, even now, he is making deals. Still, even now, he is making demands and messing with her head. "No, Malfoy," she bites out, "I do not pity you."

He seems pleased with this and nods once. "See that that does not change, Mudblood. Do not waste your pity on me. It would be unwise."

She stands and transfers the ball to her left hand. "I told you not to call me that, Malfoy." she spits out, "And I will do whatever I bloody please regardless of what you think is wise or not."

The guards are opening the door then and she is already walking toward it, her back to him. She will not look back, even when he next speaks.

"Then I will eat you alive, Mudblood" he calls after her, "Skin, bones, and soul."


	8. How We Are Not the Same

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW blood and gore

**Wednesday, November 13th. Continued.**

She extracts the memory, just like last time, but even when the images in her mind dull and blur around the edges, she cannot ignore that Malfoy is being tortured anymore. Her fingers curl against her palm, even as she follows the guards back out of the prison and toward the apparition point just offshore. Once they are out of earshot, Hermione clears her throat and says, "Dawlish, there's something I want to talk to you about."

* * *

She waits until they get back to Andromeda's house before resuming the argument, which was paused briefly so they could wade out into the cold water of the Black Sea to take a portkey back. She doesn't even waste time on a drying spell. "I don't care who he is!" she roars, throwing her hands wide and turning on Dawlish.

"Hermione, calm down!" Mallory hisses, putting a restraining hand on her shoulder. "You won't change any minds like this. Think about what you're doing."

"No!" and she knows how much she must sound like Ron but she doesn't care. She has become part of this great, twisted knot of injustice and she cannot stand it anymore. She imagines the teeth in her chest upstairs. She imagines Malfoy's shut and sunken eye. She imagines herself standing over him in the woods, damnation dressed like salvation. "You can't keep torturing him! He's  _helping us!_  And do you know what he wants in return? A bloody  _Daily Prophet_! A  _newspaper!_ "

Dawlish is trying very hard to contain his anger. There is a vein pulsing at his temple and his jaw clenches and unclenches. "I will not have this talk with you again, girl!"

"We will have it time and again until you see reason! You can't keep torturing him! This is going to get out at some point and when it does, I won't stand by you when the press attacks!"

"You are not a ministry official!" He roars finally, "You are little more than a child! You have no ability to affect this call being made!"

"Oh, yes I do," she widens her eyes, "I won't speak with him again until I have your word that he won't be tortured for information that he'll give us willingly! He can't just keep being treated like a...like a war criminal anymore!"

"But he  _is_  a war criminal!" Dawlish throws his meaty hands in the air around his face, "That is actually what he is!"

She lets out a strangled cry, "Then don't expect me to go back to Azkaban again! I'm not going to be a part of this...this  _madness_  anymore!" and she turns on her heel and storms out of the house, slamming the door behind her so hard that the windows shake.

On the second floor of the house, Dawlish's bed catches on fire, but Hermione doesn't know this. In fact, no one knows it at all until, five minutes later, Ginny opens the door because she smells smoke and by then the entire room has been engulfed in flames.

* * *

**Friday, November 15th.**

Two days later, there is a knock on her door, and Dawlish shows himself in before she can answer it. He has been staying in a different safehouse since the fire and Hermione has not missed him in the slightest.

"He has been given a Daily Prophet from this week," he says without any introduction. "He is in permanent solitary confinement. There will be no more interrogations but you  _will_  cooperate from now on. On everything."

She sits up on her bed, where she has been reading. "Of course."

"We'll be going back again at some point in the future.  _You_  will be going back. We need to know whatever he'll tell us. Your goal is to find out if he has any memories intact enough to share with us and, if he does, you are to obtain them. Is that clear?"

"Yes," she replies, nodding. "Ok. Definitely."

"You also will not request to be put on any more squads. If you're needed for a fight, we'll let you know, but you can't just keep asking to go into spats. You're on healing duty until further notice. That clear?"

Spats, Hermione knows by now, are what the Aurors call fights. Like giving them a cute, small name makes them any less dangerous. "Ok," she says eventually, although she doesn't like it. She likes the idea of torture even less, even if it is only Malfoy and even if no one deserves it more than he does.

"When there is a spat and you are on reserve, you will not complain about it. You will wait to receive word on the off chance that your skills as a curse-breaker or healer are needed or to hear from a messenger upon the completion of the mission."

"Ok," she says because there really isn't anything else that she can say to this, even if she wants to.

"Right then." Dawlish nods once. "Andromeda says lunch is ready and you are to come down to eat."

Hermione smiles at this. Andromeda Tonks probably only said the first part and Dawlish has inserted the second on his own. "Ok," she says, replacing her bookmark and sliding in her sock-clad feet to the floor.

He turns to go, and she notices that his ears are red. "And Dawlish, thank you. I really appreciate it."

He grunts and doesn't turn around.

* * *

**Tuesday, November 19th. Afternoon.**

There is a raid on an undisclosed location and, of course, Hermione is not allowed to go. She waits at the kitchen table with Ginny, who is chewing noisily on her fingernails. Everything seems louder than it should right now. The rain is hammering on the windows outside, the clock is ticking loud and obnoxious above the doorframe, and every time the wood on the fire snaps or pops, both girls jump and look around, just to be sure it wasn't the sound of apparition. Hermione sighs through her nose and opens the first aid kit again, triple-checking to make sure that they still have everything that they might need.

She wishes Andromeda were here, just for the familiarity of her unflappable presence, but Tonks wasn't feeling well and Andromeda has been with her for three days now. Hermione did not know how accustomed she had become to Andromeda's presence until she was suddenly gone.

There is a crack of thunder outside. The door swings open and Mallory stumbles in, supported by Justin Finch-Fletchley, his curling blonde hair plastered to his face with rainwater and a streak of someone else's blood smeared across his chin. He helps Mallory into a chair where she winces as she bends to remove her boot. He squats in front of her to help untie them.

"What happened?" asks Hermione. Her wand is in her hand already. "Did you find him?"

Mallory shakes her head, splattering the floor with rainwater as Justin slides her shoe gingerly from her left foot. "No, but we did manage to catch a dozen or so Death Eaters."

Justin pulls off her sock with trembling fingers and she whimpers. Just sucks in a breath as he examines the bloody, ragged hole about the size of a sickle in the center of Mallory's foot. Blood drips through it and onto the floor and, although it is ragged with blood and torn skin, Hermione can clearly see light shining through it. She swallows thickly and begins to rummage through the little supply bottles.

"What happened to you?" Ginny asks, her eyes wide as she takes in the slow ooze of blood pooling at the point of Mallory's heal.

"When they realized we had found them, one of them threw these little black marble things across the floor at us. They'd go right through whatever they came into contact with. Anything but wood, but we didn't realize it until people started stepping on them."

"I got lucky," Mallory smiles at them, although her skin is pale and faintly green, "Williamson fell on a bunch of them, I don't know if he made it but Dawlish said  _secrecy be damned_  and apparated him right to St. Mungo's. We made out better than the Death Eaters, at any rate." She winces again as Hermione droppers dittany into the hole. The first drop goes right through her foot and lands on the floor, but the second drop catches on a flap of loose skin. Mallory hisses through her teeth as the dittany sizzles on the wound. Next, Hermione measures out a teaspoon of skele-gro and Mallory grimaces as she swallows it.

"Disgusting," she complains. Ginny hands her a glass of water.

Hermione watches, fascinated, as the bone—the fourth metatarsal—regrows, building yellow-white cell on top of yellow-white cell until it fills the hole completely. Hermione measures out three more drops of dittany onto the exposed bone. She wishes she didn't have to use so much. Dittany is rare and expensive, but she can't leave a wound like this to heal on its own.

"Thanks," Mallory sighs and leans back in the chair, "much better." She curls and flexes her toes.

"I don't know why you didn't just go to St. Mungo's," Justin says now that the danger seems to have passed.

"No need," she waves away the idea of it, "Hermione took care of it no problem, just like I said she would." Mallory gives her a grin, but Hermione doesn't return it. She is capable of more than putting dittany on things, and she doesn't appreciate being thrown this small of a bone. Ginny shoos Mallory out of the chair so she can scourgify the bloodstains. The short-haired witch gingerly puts weight on her freshly healed foot. "And besides, orders are orders and I wasn't going to die or anything."

"I'm not going to give you a blood replenishing potion, are you alright without it, do you think? And what orders?" Hermione asks.

"Fine. I hate how they taste, anyway." Mallory nods. "Dawlish wanted me to come back to tell you that it worked. His information was good, even though Kingsley wasn't there, so you should be ready to head back to Azkaban in the morning."

Hermione glances at the clock. It is a bit after four in the afternoon, even though the sky out the window is dark enough for midnight. "What time are we going?"

"Ten thirty," replies Mallory. She taps the hole in her boot with her wand, " _Reparo_. Same as last time."

* * *

She goes to bed that night thinking about Harry and Ron. There has been no word from them in what feels like forever. No news is, of course, good news because if there was news, it would be bad news, but she still doesn't like it. She feels eyes on her almost all the time now, and she wonders if she is being haunted by a spirit or struck with a curse.

She doesn't know when it started, not exactly, but the first time she remembers feeling watched like this was when she was imprisoned in that dark room. A cold thought catches her heart: What if she wasn't alone down there at all? What if some sort of dark magic was waiting down there in the dark until it could attach itself to someone, and now it is attached to her? She rubs her thumb in swift circles across the base of her wand and worries her lip between her teeth.

There is a soft pressure on her chest and she sits up so fast that Crookshanks is hurled across the room with a yowl of surprise.

"Whazzat?" Ginny asks, her voice hoarse and confused. "Whazzat sound?"

"Oh, Crooks," Hermione sighs and nonverbally lights the tip of her wand. "I'm so sorry. Are you alright?"

He lets out a grumble in response, and clambers back onto the bed, although this time, he is careful to jump up to the left side of her head and not directly onto her chest.

* * *

**Wednesday, November 20th. Morning.**

This time, she borrows Ginny's high quidditch boots and she wears her muggle raincoat. Mallory and Dawlish give her strange looks as she tromps into the kitchen.

"Stare all you want," she says primly, her nose in the air, "But I will be warm and dry while the two of you are shivering in that freezer they try to pass off as a prison."

"Right. You know the drill. Hands on the shell."

"What kind of shell is it, Dawlish?" Mallory asks lightly.

"Why do you want to know?" Is the growled reply.

"Curiosity." Mallory shrugs lightly. "Is this another murex?" she asks.

"No, and get your hand on the damned thing, or we'll leave you behind." A blush is spreading down the side of Dawlish's neck, and there is a vein throbbing at his temple.

"But what shall I put my hand on, oh Leader of Mine?" Mallory's hand hovers just above the shell.

Dawlish mumbles something too low and fast for even Hermione to catch it.

"I couldn't quite catch that, Dawlish," Mallory giggles, high and girlish.

Hermione fights to keep down a grin as Dawlish, broad-shouldered and booming-voiced, thunders, "Lightning Whelk!"

Grinning triumphantly, Mallory puts her hand on the shell.

* * *

"Aren't you worried he's going to sack you?" Hermione asks as they slog through the water towards the waiting guards.

Mallory gives her a calculating look. "He can't," she replies quietly, her voice barely audible above the crashing waves. "When the ministry fell, we defected rather than work under Death Eater control. He isn't actually my boss anymore."

Hermione knew that the Aurors had defected, of course, but she also knew that everyone still followed rank and Dawlish still acted like he was in charge. With the exception of Mallory, the Aurors mostly keep to themselves at Andromeda's house and they never wear the bright blue Phoenix armbands, so they are as much an imposing mystery to the "civilians" as they have always been. Hermione just assumed they still had some sort of hierarchy established, but hearing Mallory so clearly state that she did not have to listen to Dawlish sounded so strange; like someone had taken the world apart and then put it back together sideways.

"Of course we still mostly listen to him," Mallory adds, sensing Hermione discomfiture, "he's the most experienced and he really does look out for us." She looks up at Dawlish, who twenty feet in front of them, already on the shore, his face like a thundercloud. A devilish look in her eye, Mallory cups her hands around her mouth and calls, "Isn't that right, Dawlish?"

He grunts and thunders back, "Hurry up your arses or I'll leave you here."

"Aw, you aren't still sore about the seashell thing, are you?"

* * *

Hermione holds out her wand silently and they don't even ask before they take it. The waterfall still soaks through Hermione's hair and it weighs on her shoulders like a dead body, but the raincoat keeps her mostly dry. Everything else is exactly the same. They turn left and they turn right and a stretch of wall opens up like a door in front of them when they stop.

The guard on the left holds the gray ball out to her. "If anything happens that makes you even remotely uncomfortable, loosen your grip on the ball. It will lock down the cell, effectively ending communication and we will be alerted," he says, but she is nodding without listening.

Mallory gives her a thumbs up when the guard on the right holds the door open for her, and Dawlish looks stonily at her with his arms folded across his chest.

He is crumpled on the bed, a tangle of fabric, just like he was on their first meeting.

"Malfoy," she says, a bit louder than normal. Is he sleeping? She thinks it a bit out of character for him to be such a deep sleeper while he is a prisoner in Azkaban. Maybe he's dead. She can't, after all, see the rise and fall of breathing, but that could also just be a function of the distance.

"Malfoy," she tries again, "Have you died?"

"Yes," replies his voice, but not from the bed. He is on the other side of the cell, hidden mostly by shadow. "But not today, I'm afraid." He steps forward and sits gracefully on the edge of his cot, his hands dangling in front of his knees. The scabs on his fingertips are shiny, but they do not look new. There is a deep cut running from just beside his left eye to the tip of his chin, like a crooked smile carved onto his face. His nose is still bent unnaturally to one side. His right eye is still mostly closed, but a sliver of gray iris and red scabbing peaks out at her from under the puffy, purple lid. He looks horrible, but less horrible than last time and none of the damage looks new. She sits a bit straighter.

His head snaps toward her face suddenly, like catching sight of something. The intensity of his stare unnerves her, like he is trying to memorize some change in her features that she was unaware of, at least until his head tilts sideways and his eyes meet hers. Then, she realizes with a cold start that he was not looking at her at all, but just past her face. The hairs on the back of her neck rise and goose pimples erupt on her skin.

"Fear makes the wolf look bigger, but don't tell the wolf it's so," he tells her matter-of-factly, and she almost believes that he is not talking like a madman, that he knows something about whatever curse she is under.

Maybe he does, she thinks to herself. He is, after all, a Death Eater. "Your information was good," she informs him, "But Kingsley wasn't there."

"Did they let you go, Granger? When they raided the house? Were you there?" His words are intense, desperate, almost, like he is hungry for something and looking for it anywhere he can, although she doesn't know what exactly that is. His tongue darts out and wets his lips.

She did not expect the question, but she maintains her composure when she answers, anyway. "That is none of your business, Malfoy. Where I go and what I do when I'm not here does not concern you."

"Oh, but it does," he replies, a deranged smile curling up his cheek, "If the house still stands, it matters. But of course it stands, and you are here and not there, and it is angry and it is hungry and you talk more than play. I never play anymore, Granger. There are no more walks and talks and life is very long but not for you. Not for yours." His eyes are unfocused and his hands curl and uncurl around empty air, before relaxing downward again.

She sighs hard through her nose. By now she has learned that when Malfoy's mind wanders like this, he will bring himself back when he can, but she does not feel like waiting for that to happen. She is tired and she is wet and she is frightened, and that last one makes her angry. It is not Malfoy's fault. She knows it is illogical to blame him for his madness and how she relates his comments to her own life. She still blames him anyway.

"Where is Potter?" His eyes are fixed on her again, and his gaze is sharp.

"If I haven't told you yet," she snaps, "What honestly makes you think that I'll tell you now?"

"You will see, Granger, that I always get what I want in the end."

She gives him a look that she hopes conveys her disbelief of this statement, "Right. Anyway, we want two addresses now."

"There's no point," Malfoy shakes his head slowly, "The Muggle Lover is dead."

Her hands clench into fists. Her nails bite into her palms. "You have no way of knowing that, Malfoy, and I do not appreciate being lied to."

"Break him, bake him, feed him to the snake, him!" Malfoy calls out in a singsong voice.

"Stop it!" she snaps and, much to her surprise, he does. Even the mad smile shrinks.

"Forgive me, Granger, I know not what I do. This is no lie, although you think it so. Cleverest witch who cannot read. You will not find the body, but you will persist in looking, I am sure. You will want new places anyway, and it will be good to find the hiding holes whether they hold your treasure or not."

"You have no way of knowing if he is dead." She repeats it more for her sake than for his, because she knows what the truth must logically be, but she is having a hard time convincing her heart of it.

"But I know where he is?" His eyebrow almost quirks, but not quite.

"You know where he might be, Malfoy. There's a difference." She sneers at him then, because he is pretending to know more than he does. He is trying to make himself seem more important than he really is and it is pathetic, serving only to remind her what an opportunistic snake he really is. Even now, he is trying to bargain. She almost regrets the deal she made with Dawlish on his behalf. He does not seem the least bit grateful. If anything, he is even more insufferable than he was before.

"And thus wars are fought."

This gives her pause. The comment is almost thought-provoking, or it would be if he were not so mad while saying it. It sounds like it should mean something deep, but in context she cannot figure out what it might mean. Anyway, she isn't here for a social chat, and his comment about Kingsley still has her hackles raised. "Will you cooperate: yes or no?" she asks bluntly.

He closes his eyes and inhales deeply. "A new perfume?"

"Yes or no?" She repeats. She isn't wearing perfume but she did wash her hair this morning and she wonders to herself if it is even possible that he can smell her shampoo.

"And what will I get in return?" he asks, as he has asked both times before now.

She doesn't even bother answering. She just picks her chin up a little higher and gives him her haughtiest stare.

He stretches his arms forward, and they are so long that they almost reach the bars of the cage. His knuckles crack and he arches backward like a cat. Like he is just waking up from a nap. Like this is a meeting between friends and he is comfortable where he is. His fingers bend like they have been broken too often.

"A newspaper," he says for the second time. "What day is it today?"

Dawlish chewed her out for answering that one last time, so she doesn't want to answer it today. She glares at him instead, but something about his demeanor has shifted. There is an almost tentative curiosity in his words, and he is looking up at her from under his eyelashes. Like he doesn't want to hope that she'll answer but he's hoping anyway. Like he doesn't want to put that much faith in her but he's putting faith in her anyway.

Hermione's mind pulls out like a camera on a string and she is watching her life unfold as though she is watching this all in a movie. She sees herself sitting cross-armed and cross-legged in front of a badly broken boy, and he is asking her what day it is, and she is not going to answer because she doesn't want to give him even that much satisfaction, and suddenly she knows how petty and small withholding such information really is. Somewhere, and she isn't sure where, she started seeing this meeting as her versus him, and she can't stand that. It leaves a bad taste in her mouth because Dawlish is wrong—this isn't about good guys and bad guys. She doesn't know yet what it really is about, but she is sure that is not it.

"It's Wednesday."

His head leans forward and lets out a sigh, his eyes closed. He mutters something, but she cannot hear what it is. He is smiling faintly when his head tilts back up towards her. The smile is too serene, too beautiful to belong to a face like his. "Run along, little mudblood," he says, "Tell your friends what I have said. I am sure I will see you again soon."

She wants to stay longer just to spite him, but at the same time, she doesn't want to spend any more time than absolutely necessary shivering in this room opposite a deranged reminder of her past whose smile makes her skin crawl.

So she shifts the ball from her left hand to her right. The door swings open and she is escorted out. Malfoy's eye remains trained on her until the door is closed between them. 

* * *

She leaves the visitor's room with the little vial of her memory held in her hand.

"You don't look too good," Mallory says after Hermione hands the vial off to Dawlish.

Hermione shakes her head in reply. "This place is getting to me," she says. It isn't the whole truth, she knows. Malfoy is getting to her more than Azkaban is, but she doesn't want to admit to that out loud, especially not with Dawlish within hearing.

Still, it's true enough that Mallory seems to buy it. "It does that to everyone," she says and claps Hermione once on the back. "We'll get out of here, and we'll get a drink. Do you smoke?"

"Bulstrode, you will not get anyone else hooked on that filthy habit! The girl is young. Act like the adult your birth certificate says you are." Dawlish's warning voice cuts in and both girls jump.

"It was only a question," Mallory grumbles but doesn't press the subject anymore. "Killjoy," she grumbles under her breath.

Later that evening, while Hermione is sitting by the fireplace with a book and her cat, Ginny pads into the room and flops onto the couch beside her.

"Mallory said you need some girl time," Ginny says, "So what's going on?"

Hermione looks up at her, more confused than anything else. "I have no idea," she replies honestly. Crookshanks puts a paw on her hand to remind her to keep scratching his chin. She complies.

"Is it the boys?" Ginny asks, and by the tender way she says  _boys_ , Hermione knows that, no matter how much she misses Harry and Ron, Ginny probably misses them more. Ginny hasn't been allowed to leave Andromeda's once since she and Hermione arrived here more than a month ago. She isn't allowed any farther than the edge of the fenced-in yard.

"I suppose it is," Hermione lies, even though she knows that if anything is bothering her, it is her meeting with Malfoy that has left her disconcerted and angry.

Ginny nods understandingly, "I miss them too. It's like I'll never be whole again, you know? Between them and F-Fred," she swallows quickly as she says the name and blinks too often to just be clearing her eyes, "It's like everything is more broken than can ever be fixed, you know?"

It is worth noting that this is the first time Hermione has heard any of the Weasleys say his name since he died, and all of a sudden it feels like there is a ghost of him in the room, like the shadow staining the carpet at Ginny's feet will always belong to him.

Loss, Hermione realizes, is like a car crash. Physics teaches that in any car crash, there are really three smaller crashes. There is the car connecting with the other car, or with the telephone pole, or with whatever it is hitting. Then there is the body being thrown forward against the seatbelt or dashboard or road, since according to Newton's first law, a body in motion will stay in motion until it meets some sort of resistance. The third type of collision is the worst kind. It is the organs and blood and whatnot inside the person that are thrown forward against the rib cage or skin of the person in the crash. This is the most dangerous type of crash because this is the one that doesn't show immediate damage but has a lasting effect. Fred died. It only happened once and it was sudden and then it was over, like a car hitting a telephone pole. Everyone grieved his death. That was their heads hitting the dashboard. But he is still an empty hole that they cannot fill; he is still an aching cavity where love once sat. And that is the last accident, and that is the one that hurts the most; that does the most damage.

Hermione puts an arm around Ginny's skinny shoulders, careful not to dislodge Crookshanks, "It's all going to be ok," she lies.


	9. The Unlocked Door

**Sunday, November 23rd. Afternoon.**

When the back door rattles open this time, it is Lavender Brown and Seamus Finnegan who stumble in. Both are covered in sweat and they look excited.

"Did you find him?" Hermione is on her feet and Ginny is beside her.

Seamus shakes his head and Lavender collapses heavily into a chair. "But we did capture a good half-dozen, with no casualties on our side this time!" Lavender sounds pleased with herself.

Hermione tries not to feel too jealous. She is better with magic than Lavender, and Lavender has made a place for herself in a squad of people Hermione grew up with, so it is sour to taste that she is not one of them.

"That's great, Lavender!" Ginny sounds genuinely pleased, and maybe she is. After all, she can't go against her mother's order not to fight for another few months, and she is always desperately hungry for any news of the outside world and war.

"Yeah, it was mostly recruits," chimes in Seamus, "but we got Goyle senior."

Ginny crows and claps her hands, "About bloody time!"

Even Hermione smiles.

"Is there anything to eat," asks Seamus, who is already looking in the refrigerator, "I'm starving!"

* * *

**Monday, November 24th. Morning.**

"Hello, Malfoy."

He closes his eyes as she sits down in her chair, and she waits for him to decide that it is really her. His head swivels as he looks past her, but his gaze pauses on her chair, and then his head tilts down and he is staring at her feet. She curls her toes inside her boots. She thinks about the claws reaching from the darkness but towards her ankles this time. But now is not the time to get worked about whatever curse is following her.  _If_ a curse is following her at all. There's been no sign of it for at least a week. Malfoy's probably just trying to scare her. She doesn't know if he would be able to tell if she were truly scared, but she won't risk giving him the satisfaction. She leaves her feet planted firmly on the ground and tries to slow her breathing down by force.

"It has claws," he returns by way of greeting.

She wonders if he read her mind, or at least her imagination.  _I am thinking about purple panda bears!_  she thinks as loudly as she can, just to throw him off if he can (but she knows he can't). Out loud, she says, "Good to know," and she tries to keep the fear out of her voice, but the sound comes out higher and closer to a whine than normal.

His eyes are still bruised. His sharp nose is still crooked and there is another bruise that takes up his entire left cheek, which still looks sunken in. The cut on his face is a pale scab. His hair is longer now, and when he laces his fingers in his lap, she sees his nail beds are only lightly scabbed over and there is a faint crescent of nail visible at the edges of each finger, ragged but definitely present. This is evidence of her victory over the ministry, and she is proud.

"The mission was successful, Malfoy," she says then because she realizes that he is just staring at her, waiting for her to say something else. "But we need another location."

"Is this all that they want from me?" he sighs dramatically, "I could be so much more than a map, Granger. They are wasting my talents."

She shrugs and keeps her face blank. "I'm only a spokesperson, Malfoy. If you want to change things, bring it up with Dawlish or one of your keepers."

He laughs. There is no mirth in the sound but there is something very close to disgust. "Then they are wasting your talents so much more than they are wasting mine."

She agrees with him, but she can't say so because she isn't supposed to show any emotion. "A location, Malfoy. I'm here to negotiate for whatever you want next."

"Have you been keeping up with the news, Granger?" He reaches behind himself.

For one crazy moment, Hermione thinks he is going to pull out a wand and kill her. Right here, from inside his prison cell. She is on her feet, arms in front of her face to protect her eyes, nose, and mouth from whatever curse is coming. Her heart is pounding hard on her tongue she tastes fear, an acrid bile, in her throat. She is going to die. She is going to die here and now and she is going to be killed by Draco  _Fucking_  Malfoy who only now seems like he might be a threat.

But he only pulls out a neatly folded Daily Prophet.

She sits heavily back in her chair, trying to salvage what she can of her dignity. "No. I don't read that rubbish anymore."

"You really should," he says coyly. "There's a lot that can be learned from it. You aren't even aware of all the things you don't know."

"The only thing anyone can learn from that nonsense is how atrocious the media is about paying attention to what's important."

He is staring at her. His eyes are glassy and calm. There is a ghost of a smile dancing at the corners of his mouth. "I know something that you don't know, Granger," he taunts slowly.

"What do you want in exchange for another location?" she snaps back because she is no longer in a mood for these games.

"The news, Granger," is the immediate reply. "I want a daily subscription to the  _Prophet_. I can pay for it myself, but I will need a loan for the money before I can access my account."

Of all the things he can request in the world, this is what he wants. More than for his face to be healed. More than his freedom or news about his family. A newspaper. A cruel newspaper that does nothing but spout lies about "Magic-Stealing Muggles" and the dangers of "Blood Traitors" and Harry Potter to the very fabric of wizarding society. She feels very cold and very far away. She knows that Malfoy isn't the type to care about slander and prejudice against people like her, but his blasé approach to the obvious biases and bigotry is appalling and base. She has had his blood on her hands and his teeth in her pocket but he is as remote as the moon and infinitely colder.

"Fine. I'll relay the request," she says and she doesn't have to try to keep her voice flat. She is only a messenger. She doesn't know if they can grant the request, but they will see it in her memories and they will decide for themselves.

He tilts his head to one side as if he can hear something she can't and for one horrifying moment, she thinks that maybe he can, but she reminds herself that he is the crazy one, not her. A slow smile curls up his cheek. "I know something you don't know," he repeats in a singsong voice. "I know something, Granger. Something you don't. Do you want to know what it is, Granger?" He sways from side to side like a snake before a sparrow and rises slowly to his feet. His posture is rigid and his head almost grazes the ceiling. She can see the outline of his collarbone through the thin material of his shirt.

"If it isn't about where we can find the minister, Malfoy—"

"Oh, but it is. It's the secret to all of this. It will reveal everything to you- where you stand in all of this and even what role I shall play."

She considers this for a moment. There is a very good chance, she thinks, that he is making this up just to toy with her. He's trying to get a reaction and he's using her well-known curiosity against her, but still, part of her wonders if maybe he does know something. "Fine," she says eventually, "What is it?"

"Come closer," he sways on his feet again, lurches forward one step. He isn't wearing shoes. The gray Azkaban pants leave his ankles exposed to the cold. They are knobby. He wraps his hands around the bars of his cage.

Something about this seems off to her, but she can't figure out what it is. She stands and takes a step toward him, so her toes are just along the black line painted on the floor. It is sticky under her shoes. Like tar.

"Closer," he says again and his eyes are glassy in the dull light. He is still smiling at her and his head presses against the bars.

Hesitantly, she takes a step over the line. Nothing happens. No doors open. No alarms sound. Nothing happens, except that Malfoy smiles a bit wider and the grin is too big for his hollowed-out face. A pink tongue darts out and wets his lips. He whispers something.

Hermione watches his lips move, but can't hear anything. "What did you say?" she leans forward, takes another step toward him. "I couldn't hear you." It is stupid to take another step toward him, she knows, but Dawlish and the guards had both assured her that she is protected by more than one type of barrier and so what harm could there be in taking a step toward him? She knows it is probably stupid to test fate like this, and she hesitates. Hermione Granger has always been the smart one, but being the smart one has been more trouble than it is worth recently. She wants to be brave, and one cannot be brave and smart simultaneously. She chooses to be brave.

He whispers again and she leans in to hear it. "Y...ti..ish. If...gi...a..."

She takes another step forward, and she is so close now that she can see the shadowy crease on the bridge of his nose where it has snapped and the flecks of blue around the dilated pupil of his left eye. She is so close that she could reach out to touch him if she wanted to, but she knows that the barriers won't let her through.

Something cold brushes against the knuckles of her right hand and her head snaps down as his fingers pull back inside the cell. It was barely a touch at all. So gentle she might doubt it had happened at all if she didn't still feel the cold on her hand.

"They haven't locked the door in a week. They want to see what I'll do."

She takes stumbling steps backward and realizes, too late that the ball isn't in her hands anymore. It's in Malfoy's and he tosses it from his left and to his right. The door swings open. The guards rush in and Dawlish is close behind them. He drags her backward toward the exit as spells flash red into Malfoy's cage.

* * *

Her hands are still shaking as they make their way to the apparition point, "He was lying, Hermione," Dawlish barks. "This is exactly why I told you not to get too close. And why the hell did you cross that line?"

"I didn't think…never thought you would…he could…"

"That's my fault. Should've warned you, maybe. Thought it was too much of a risk. If you got jumpy, he would've known we were doing it on purpose. We wouldn't have let him hurt you. Had to know what he'd try to do if we gave him a chance. With what he's asking for, it's the only way."

She nods and tries to believe him. "Of course," she says, regaining her composure. "It's just a bit of a shock is all."

"Course it is," he is gruff, but not unkind. "He's your first real prisoner. They don't have anything to do but think all day, now that we've lost the dementors, which is ruddy the worst thing to happen so far, so all they do is plan how to mess with the good guys."

Hermione remembers the dementors and she remembers Sirius, haunted and gaunt after his stay in Azkaban. She remembers Harry screaming and collapsing. She remembers the cold hand of hopelessness closing around her own heart. She doesn't think that they "lost" the dementors and she certainly doesn't think it's the "worst thing to happen" that they aren't in Azkaban anymore, but she doesn't say any of this. Instead, she says, "I knew him from school, you know. Malfoy. He wasn't like this then."

"War changes everyone," Dawlish replies.

Hermione nods but doesn't answer. She is trying to figure out if Draco's words were a warning or a threat. She is trying to decide if he was lying to her or not, but Dawlish is being too understanding for her to truly believe he's sincere.

He says then, "After we get to Andromeda's. Firewhiskey for the nerves. Only thing in order after something like this."

* * *

True to his word, as soon as they get to the safe house, Dawlish pulls a bottle out of a cabinet above the refrigerator as she folds into her usual chair at the table.

"Oh," he says, like the idea hits him suddenly, "Forgot. I'll want that memory from you before we start drinking. Alcohol muddles things, and I want this to be clear."

"Right," she says, caught off guard. She stands, "I've got vials up in my room. I'll just go do that now."

He nods and she scampers up the stairs to the room she shares with Ginny and counts herself lucky that Ginny is not inside. She siphons out the memory for Dawlish and, on an impulse, she recalls the spell that Lupin used to copy her memory months ago, and quietly makes a copy of her memory and drops the second silvery strand into a separate vial that she hastily stuffs into her beaded bag. She doesn't want to take too long, just in case Dawlish thinks she's tampering with the memory, and so she tosses her bag onto her bed and heads back downstairs.

They have three rounds of firewhiskey and she is feeling relaxed and smiley by the time he leaves. He reminds her of an uncle who died when she was young—her mother's brother—and she almost regrets keeping a copy of the memory for herself. She almost gives it back to him when he puts on his traveling cloak, but she doesn't want to end the evening on a sour note, so she resolves to just watch the memory and prove to herself that she has no reason to be suspicious. She is sure she won't see anything in it other than exactly what happened.

* * *

**Tuesday, November 15** **th** **. Midmorning.**

She approaches Andromeda as she chops vegetables for dinner.

"Andromeda," she says as politely as she can, "Do you have a Pensieve I could borrow?"

"That depends on what you want it for," Andromeda replies without missing a beat. Her eyes are calculating as she looks Hermione up and down.

Hermione expected this and has prepared accordingly. "I want to look at some memories of a new Death Eater curse," she recites. She has been rehearsing the lie in her room all morning, "It's one that—"

"I don't want to hear about another of these curses," Andromeda cuts in, waving the knife as if to ward off a particularly gruesome mental image. Her husband has been missing for three days. He is on a mission and Andromeda clearly doesn't want to think about what might happen to him. Hermione mentally pats herself on the back for choosing this excuse.

Andromeda leads Hermione up to a study on the third floor and unlocks a cabinet, pulling a small, empty Pensieve out and placing it gently on the table. "You know how to use this, I'm sure."

"I do, thanks," Hermione confirms.

"And you'll want privacy, I'm sure. Just come find me when you're done so I can lock the room up," Andromeda says. Hermione is grateful for this because she doesn't know what she'd say if Andromeda wanted to stay. "Take as long as you need." Then she is gone.

As soon as the door is shut, Hermione charms it locked and then empties the bottle into the Pensieve and sticks her head in.

"Hello, Malfoy," Memory-Hermione says, sitting straight-backed in her metal chair.

Memory-Malfoy closes his eyes and opens them again. Hermione walks around the chair to see if she can catch a glimpse of the imaginary monster, but there is nothing out of the ordinary in what she sees.

"The mission was successful, Malfoy," she hears herself say and she is so surprised by this she passes right through herself and feels like she has been plunged into a bucket of icy water.

"No," she mumbles to her memory-self, her eyebrows draw low over her eyes, "that isn't what happened."

She restarts the memory. Then again. And again. Over and over, looking for the seam where something must have been altered, but there is nothing. "Hello, Malfoy," she says coldly over and over again. He blinks—that's all it is, a blink—and then she says, "The mission was successful, Malfoy." Like there was nothing at all between these things, but she knows that there was! She can remember it perfectly in her mind! Extraction hasn't dulled  _that_  part. Malfoy told her it had claws and she had been frightened by it!

But did he? Had she?

There is no seam in the watercolor-reality of the Pensieve. There is no glitch in her memory, and so she doubts the memory she has in her mind.

She glares into the swirling depths of the Pensieve, her knuckles white as she grips the edge of the table. Her heart is thundering in her ears, her breath is in short, ragged gasps.  _What's going on?_ She feels like she's in the center of a hurricane; like she's been thoughtlessly living her life in the eye of a terrible storm and only now as violent winds begin to tear her house apart does she even realize there's a storm at all. She wonders if she is going mad. She thinks that there is a pretty good chance that her time in that dark cell unhinged her a bit, but she cannot doubt how she escaped, nor the wand she brought back with her, although the ministry was never able to trace the wand back to an original owner. Something is not right. There's a disconnect between what she knows and others believe has happened. She can feel the world spinning around her and she is starting to doubt her place in it.

But Malfoy said something! She knows he did.

No one else might believe her, her own memories might betray her, but Malfoy knows.

It is not much consolation to think that, even as reality distorts like a funhouse mirror around her, a half-mad ex-Death Eater can at least corroborate her story.

But wondering about her own sanity isn't getting her anywhere.

Reluctantly, she forces her brain back to the query she originally set out to answer and dives back into the memory, resolved to watch it all the way through this time.

"I know something you don't know," Malfoy taunts for the second time, his head tilted to the side. She can see, now, that he is not looking at her figure in the chair when he is speaking, but his eyes are wildly roaming around the room. Hermione walks up to him and passes through the ephemeral bars of the cell. She circles him as memory-Hermione speaks.

Only from this close can she see how thin he is. His back is hunched forward, and she can see the ridges of his spine and the outline of his ribs through the thin shirt. Scars peek up over the collar of his shirt, raised and paler than his skin like long white worms shining in the dim torchlight.

She circles back toward his face and stands in the bars, only inches from him. His tongue flicks out and he licks his lips. Her eyes follow the gesture, and she turns to catch her own response, but he whispers. "Are you listening, Dawlish?" It is barely more than a breath.

"What did you say?" Memory-Hermione says and present-Hermione jumps. The memory-her leans forward and takes a step toward Malfoy. Hermione had never realized how loud her own voice was before. Even her shoes sound loud on the flagstones. "I couldn't hear you."

Hermione watches the fear flicker in her own eyes. Is she afraid of Malfoy? Oh, if only her fifteen-year-old self could see her now—separated from her friends and afraid of a schoolyard bully.

He whispers again, just behind her ear and she can hear him clearly this time. "You are wasting my time, Dawlish. If you do not give me what I want soon then I float away on the blood of your Aurors. You do not want me as your enemy, Dawlish. I know things you don't."

She approaches the cell now, in the memory, and Malfoy's eyes dilate. Hermione turns to see the freckles on her own nose, and she watches Malfoy's eyes rake over her face. His nostrils flare ever-so-slightly like he is smelling her, but his eyes never stray farther than her collar, and he keeps eye contact with her steadily. Even as a third-party observer, Hermione cannot read the expression in his flat gaze.

His hand is through the bars before he even begins to speak, even though he never breaks eye contact with her. His fingers close around the edges of the ball in her hand. "They haven't locked the door in a week. They want to see what I'll do."

She watches as he turns his fingers ever-so-slightly to brush his ring and fifth fingers against her knuckles. The gesture is gentler than she expected, and not an accident at all. It was intentional, to let her know what he was doing without having to tell her. Memory-Hermione recoils from the touch automatically and the ball stays in Malfoy's hand. In the memory, her eyes are wide with panic.

She is still in the cell with Malfoy, who sighs lightly, "Three days, Dawlish." he says it so quietly that if she were any father from him, she wouldn't even have known he had spoken.

The door on the other side of the hallway bursts open. There are flashes of light. The memory ends.

Hermione is standing in the orange glow of sunset in Andromeda's study. With shaking fingers, she siphons the memory back into the small vial and replaces the Pensieve in the cabinet. She takes a moment to settle her hammering heart before leaving the room.

* * *

"Did you find out what you needed?" Andromeda asks when Hermione returns to the kitchen. She is stirring a large pot of good-smelling stew over a blue-green fire.

"For the most part," she replies, and she is proud of how even her voice remains.


	10. Vows

**Wednesday, November 27th. Midmorning.**

When Hermione thinks about Harry now, she remembers him with broken glasses and clothes that are too big. She thinks about him a lot. More than anyone else, even Ron or her parents, which she admits to herself with a squirm of guilt in her belly. She doesn't know why she thinks about him so often. She loves him, of course, but she loves Ron and her parents, too, and she doesn't think about them nearly as much as she thinks about Harry.

Ginny is the same way, she knows.

Hermione doesn't normally sleep well at night, at least not for very long before some or other nightmare tugs her awake or some invisible night sound wrenches her from sleep. And then there are the horrible few seconds when she can't remember where she is and the dark is suffocating and she can still smell that dead body out there in the dark. So, to avoid this problem completely, she spends most of the night at the kitchen table with books and Crookshanks or the occasional other insomniac or night owl who is passing through the house for a few days. Sometimes, though, exhaustion or a desire not to have to make polite conversation with strangers drags her up the stairs and into her own room, where she flops heavily on her bed and stares at the glow-in-the-dark hands of her muggle clock, waiting for morning.

Whenever she does this, Ginny turns in her sleep and more often than not, she mumbles something. Hermione doesn't know if Ginny knows that she talks in her sleep, but she figures she must know since she shared a room with four other girls during her years at Hogwarts. It is always names that Ginny murmurs, coupled with little, nonsensical comments. "Arnold, stop eating my hair," she'll sometimes say, or, "I don't want to visit Aunt Muriel." "Fred! No!" is common now, as are the names of her other brothers, but she never mentions anyone as much as she mentions "Harry." Harry, like a prayer. Harry, like a secret. Harry, so tenderly it can only be said by a girl who has never loved another boy.

Hermione doesn't understand this fierce devotion. All of her relationships have been short-lived and more rooted in friendship than any bone-deep longing. Maybe she isn't capable of the kind of love that Ginny has for Harry. Maybe she's too cerebrally involved for that. But she wonders what it must feel like to be so far away from your sun, moon, and stars. Hermione doesn't know how Ginny does it.

But Hermione thinks about Harry, too, in her own way, and misses him constantly. Hermione has always admired two things about Harry: The first is Harry's ability to make friends everywhere he goes. At first, when they were young, she thought it was only because fame perpetually preceded him. As they got older, though, she began to realize that there is a disarming honesty in Harry. He is so very genuine and earnest that one cannot help but trust him. Harry really looks at you when you're talking to him, like he can't believe that you've picked him of all people to talk to.

Hermione isn't like that at all, and she knows it. She isn't  _un_ friendly, but she refuses to turn off or dull down her intellect and this, she long ago figured out, sometimes rubs people the wrong way. She is very familiar with glazed-over stares and dismissive eye-rolls, but sometimes she wishes that she could comport herself just a bit more like Harry; that she could drum up loyalty even in the least likely of places. This is why he is the secret weapon—more than any connection to Voldemort or any foolish prophecy. He is a beacon of hope and a rallying point without being anything other than himself. And this, Hermione firmly believes, is the trait in Harry that Dumbledore so ardently prized.

The other trait she envies is Harry's undauntable courage. Hermione is too smart to be really brave. Her brain works too much and too fast for her to make the split-second decisions that Harry and Ron have always made. When she was a first-year, the sorting hat took a long time deliberating between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, and it was her admiration for bravery which finally had her placed after nearly four agonizing minutes. She'll face danger, of course—she is a Gryffindor down to the bottom of her soul—but she'll do it with knocking knees and a trembling wand. Harry, on the other hand, has faced certain death so many times that they greet each other like old friends when they meet. She thinks about Harry the most when she is scared, and when she is unsure of whether to proceed with what is safe or what is brave, she invariably asks herself, "What would Harry do?"

She is asking herself this question right now, as she is walking down the narrow tunnel toward Malfoy's cell.

She knows exactly how she got to this point: Dawlish sent an owl to Andromeda the night before, saying that Hermione was to be ready for another trip to Azkaban in the morning, as they discussed. The prospect of going back to Azkaban is not the vaguely terrifying part. The problem is that she has no doubt that Malfoy was telling the truth about not being locked in. Had he been under the wards as was promised by the guards and by Dawlish himself, she has no doubt that he would have been unable to touch the bars of his cage, let alone to take her security ball from her. If that were not terrifying enough on its own, the fact remains that Malfoy is still in Azkaban after the warning that he issued to Dawlish in her memory. She isn't entirely sure of what the words themselves mean (it was a very dramatic way of speaking if nothing else), but the meaning was amply apparent: let me out or people will die.

What would Harry do?  _Probably refuse to go at all unless someone explained everything to him_. But she already bargained away that option, and she wonders now if Malfoy not getting tortured was worth this.

Of course, she spent most of yesterday trying to extract her other memories from her visits with Malfoy, but the problem with memory extraction for Pensieve use is that one is left with only a dull husk of a memory so she wasn't able to get more than fuzzy pieces to view in Andromeda's Pensieve. It was just more wasted time. Malfoy's continued imprisonment after his brutish warning must indicate one of three things.

The first is that Dawlish had not yet viewed the memory, which she doubts.

The second is that he has viewed the memory and is choosing not to comply. This is the worrying option because it means Dawlish is sending her into a conversation with a madman who might want her dead and is probably not actually behind a locked door. She isn't afraid of Malfoy, exactly, although she knows she has every reason to be. That, she supposes, is because he clearly has had ample time to do her in and hasn't chosen to do so. This in itself is a puzzle that she is eager to solve when she is  _literally anywhere else._ Unless, of course, Dawlish is going to refuse to comply and Malfoy decides that now is the time to off her. Or to try to. She'll at least put up a good fight.

The third option is that Dawlish plans to comply, but as of yet has said nothing on the subject to her.

At any rate, she has to pretend that she doesn't know any of this because if she lets on that she does, Dawlish will know that she made a second copy of the memory and she has no doubt that he'll be angry about that.

"Granger," Dawlish stops her with a rough hand on her shoulder and she jumps with a yelp. Dawlish ignores this. "There's something I want to mention before we go any further."

The guards are waiting patiently farther up ahead like they knew this was coming.

"What is it?" she asks, and she is sure that he is going to tell her everything. Although she wishes he had told her sometime earlier, she is relieved the farce will end.

"We're going to try something new with Malfoy today," he continues, "You are to ask if he will be willing to help us scout locations. There are some places we can't get to and we need him to lead us."

 _Liar_ , Hermione thinks but she doesn't say anything out loud because she doesn't trust her mouth not to betray her. She has never been a good liar. Not like Dawlish is, anyway. She just stares at him.

"There are going to be security measures if he agrees. There won't be any trouble if he does what we say and follows orders."

"And what if he doesn't?"

"Never you mind about that. Ask him if he'll mind accompanying us to a location and making an unbreakable vow."

She furrows her brow. She knows what an unbreakable vow is, of course, but she doesn't know what Dawlish plans on making Malfoy promise. Things like that are tricky at the best of times and she wonders if Dawlish has given this ample thought.

"I'll answer all of your questions about it once we're out of here, but the port key activates at eleven-thirty and I'd rather get this done today."

He sounds like he just wants to finish up as quickly as possible. Hermione wonders if maybe he isn't trying to comply with Malfoy's three-day ultimatum, which would mean that he's more afraid of Malfoy than he's letting on. She wonders what sort of prisoner he is to them. She has so many questions and all of them are urgent.

_What would Harry do?_

"Alright," she says, but only because she wouldn't trust Dawlish's answers if she demanded them, anyway.

* * *

"Hello, Malfoy," she says but doesn't sit in her chair. Instead, she stands behind it, one hand braced on it. It won't move, she knows, it is bolted to the floor, but it feels good to have another solid object between them.

He is sitting at the edge of the cot when she enters and looks at her for a long time without seeming to see her. She waits for him to say something about the monster or whatever else he thinks she brings with her and, almost predictably, says "Hello to both of you, too." His eyes travel to the chair in front of her.

She pulls her hand off of the metal like it has burned her, but she is satisfied. She will copy this memory, too, in order to see if this mention of another person in the room appears.

"Two visits in one week," he says, the corner of his mouth curling up in a sneer, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

He looks almost like his old self then, and if he did not look so horrible, she might find it in herself to say something akin to 'shove off, Malfoy.' Instead, she says coldly, "Dawlish has a proposition."

His eyes are wild, then, roaming around the room like he is looking for someone else, and maybe he is. She thinks now that he might be looking for Dawlish as he watches the memories, or will watch the memories in the future since Malfoy clearly knows that that is what will happen. His lips move and it is so subtle that she would have missed it had she not been looking for it. This is a message for Dawlish, she knows, and she will be sure to figure out what it is when she goes over this memory later.

He doesn't say anything to her, clearly waiting for her to continue. This annoys her but she has a job to do, so she sighs once through her nose and then says, "Dawlish wants to know if you'll help them scout a location after making an unbreakable vow."

He tilts his head to one side, "And who will be the other half?"

She shrugs, "Dawlish, I expect, but you'll have to ask him. You'll do it, then?"

"Maybe I will and maybe I won't."

She rolls her eyes, "You don't have to be cryptic, you know."

"I am not being cryptic. Send him in." He waves a hand as if shooing her away and she notices that the skin where his nails should be is less scabbed and the slivers of nail are even longer.

Hermione sets her feet and tilts up her chin, "How do you even know he's here?"

Malfoy gives her a smile like a shark, "I can smell him on you. See him in your annoyance. Send him in." He motions again.

"I'm not your servant, Malfoy," she grinds out. "I'll call him, but only so I can get out of here that much sooner." She transfers the ball to her left hand and the door opens. The Aurors do not rush in this time. Dawlish sidles in, his hands in his pockets. He does not look afraid. In fact, he looks bored.

"Dawlish," Malfoy says smoothly, and his face is blank as ice. She hadn't realized that his face could be blanker than it was when he spoke with her, but seeing the vacant look on his face now gives her a new appreciation for the microexpressions she sometimes catches when they are alone together. His eyes are wicked, though, and full of a malice that Hermione has not seen in them ever before.

"Malfoy." Is the curt reply. Dawlish does not look afraid.

Hermione thinks she might be caught between a predatory animal and a mountain and wonders if maybe she should move out of the way.

"I have some questions for you, boy." Dawlish is in front of her and sitting in the metal chair, effectively blocking her from Malfoy's view.

At first, this strikes Hermione as impossibly rude, but then it occurs to her that this seems like a protective gesture. Her eyes widen behind Dawlish's back. He is trying to pull Malfoy's attention as far from her as possible, almost like he doesn't want her to get hurt. This notion softens her heart towards Dawlish a bit.

She steps to the side so she can get a clear view of the conversation anyway.

Malfoy stares back at Dawlish for a long time before saying, smoothly, "To whom am I to be chained?"

"Robards. You disappeared eight months ago. Our intelligence assumed you dead. How did you survive?"

"No."

This is, clearly, not the answer that Dawlish had expected. The familiar vein in his neck emerges. Hermione watches it pulse. "What work have you been carrying out for He Who Must Not Be Named in secret?"

"I will not be tethered to an Auror."

"You will be tethered to whoever I say you will be tethered. You are a prisoner, boy."

Hermione recognizes the tone very well and she cannot help the indignant huff that leaves her. Dawlish doesn't so much as look over at her, but Malfoy's eyes slide almost imperceptibly over to her for a fraction of an instant before returning to Dawlish. She understands what is going to happen, now, and only has to wait for it to unfold.

"This is not a discussion, Dawlish. These are my terms. I am perfectly capable of living out the rest of my life in this cell and there is no need for me to fight your wars." He looks bored. He glances over to the daily prophet folded beside him.

Hermione knows that this is a lie and she knows that Dawlish knows it, too, but Dawlish cannot contradict Malfoy without exposing the lie to Hermione, and suddenly she sees that Malfoy is the one in control of this conversation. For all his blustering and his commanding demeanor, Dawlish is here asking for Malfoy's help, and Malfoy is not making it easy for him to attain. The only thing she cannot figure out is where she fits into this.

"Bulstrode," Dawlish bites out.

"The Auror or the fat little girl?"

Hermione winces at the cruelty in his voice. She has a soft spot for Mallory and therefore feels protective of Millicent, whose every mention softens Mallory's sharp eyes. Hermione stands a little straighter and chews on her tongue to keep from speaking.

"Whichever," snarls Dawlish.

This answer bothers Hermione almost as much as Malfoy's original comment, but she wonders if maybe it is levied by Dawlish to protect Mallory. Allowing Malfoy to make the bond with a fellow Slytherin is a concession, she knows, but Dawlish will not give Malfoy emotional fodder if he can help it.  _Don't give him anything to grab hold of, Granger_ , she remembers him saying before her first trip to Azkaban. She wonders if this was supposed to mean emotionally too.

"No."

"Who, then?" Dawlish throws his hands into the air and shouts so loud that his voice echoes around the chamber.

Malfoy's smile is cold and confident. "Temper, Dawlish. It isn't good for your heart to be getting so worked up over such a silly little thing," his voice is quiet. In the wake of Dawlish's outburst, Malfoy's quiet is that much more powerful. "You'll work yourself into an early grave with a temper like that. It would not due for your wife to be widowed so young and while she is expecting besides."

All of the color drains out of Dawlish's face at this and Hermione is surprised, too. She didn't even know that Dawlish was married.

"Your guards gossip like old women, Dawlish. Invest in better help if you want your secrets kept." The cold smile never leaves his face and his teeth are shining.  _Grandmother, what big teeth you have!_  Hermione thinks to herself.  _All the better to eat you with, my dear._

"Who will you accept, Malfoy?" Snarls Dawlish, who clearly does not take kindly to being threatened.

"I'm sure you know, Dawlish," Malfoy practically purrs. "It shouldn't be too hard to figure out, even for you, if you really try to think."

Hermione knows. Hermione figured out where this was going as soon as Malfoy's gaze on Dawlish wavered. "Me," she says because she knows that neither of them would show enough of their hand to volunteer her. Neither wants to act like she is as important to their plans as she knows they think she is. It's ridiculous.

"Granger, leave." Demands Dawlish without looking at her. "Go wait in the hall."

"No," she says because she doesn't like orders any more than Malfoy does. She folds her arms across her chest, "He won't accept anyone else, as you very well know, and so I'll do it."

"You don't even know what that means, Granger. Stop agreeing to things you don't understand."

Hermione thinks that this is a bit hypocritical of him, since it is because of him that she's in this mess in the first place, and it's his fault that she doesn't understand half of the reason for it. "I thought that's why you let me in here at all," she counters, "because I was a good mouthpiece. I don't see how this is any different."

"He's opposed," says Malfoy without looking at her, either, "because he thinks that you won't kill me should the need arise."

Hermione doesn't know what to say to that.

"Clearly, you have done a poor job of explaining our relationship to him. But I can't say that I'm particularly surprised. No one's ever listened to you besides that Savior of All Things Annoying and his boyfriend, Weasel."

Hermione glares at Malfoy. "I wouldn't expect any different coming from the likes of you, Malfoy, since you never had any friends besides the ones your father bought for you."

Dawlish is ignoring both of them. "You've planned this all along, haven't you, Malfoy? You sick bastard. That's why you've left her alive when you've killed everyone else we've sent in. So that you'd be bound to her and you'd convince her to set you free."

Malfoy and Hermione both look at Dawlish, appalled.

"I would never-" begins Hermione, her voice high with indignance, but Malfoy cuts her off.

"As lunatic as that sentiment is, I can guarantee that if you attempt to chain me to any other living being, I will break the vow myself and I will end all concern about this once and for all. You need me alive more than you want me dead."

"Would you mind terribly  _not_   _interrupting me, Malfoy?!"_

"Would you mind terribly not inserting yourself into every conversation,  _Granger?!"_

"I don't make deals with Death Eaters," snarls Dawlish.

"Then it is lucky you do not have to begin now," Malfoy replies coldly.

It is silent while Hermione ponders this and Dawlish thinks whatever it is that Dawlish is prone to thinking.

"You will be transported tomorrow to a new location. The spell will be placed and then you will assist my Aurors. Should you fail in your duties, you will be terminated, and Granger won't have any say in that matter at all. I'll hold her down and Avada you myself if I have to."

* * *

When they get back to Andromeda's. Dawlish throws up all manner of wards and silencing spells before he sits down at the table and says, "Well, if you're going to drown me in questions, now's as good a time as any."

She sits down opposite him, "I understand that the function of an unbreakable vow is continued control, but I fail to see how it actually works in this case."

Dawlish pulls his wand from his pocket and places them on the table between them. He rolls it under the flat of his meaty hand, the same way he did the at their first meeting. She wonders if this is a nervous gesture. "Pretty straightforward, really. This," he picks up his wand, waves it, and a small black stick figure pops into being on the table's surface. It looks like it was drawn with a crayon and it moves with shaky, stop-start movements. "Is you. This," he waves his wand and a second figure appears, "is Malfoy. You'll make the vow by joining hands, naming the terms of the agreement, and then a third party will bind you two." The two stick figures perform a small vow on the table and a tiny gold string shines between them for a moment.

"Yes," she says as patiently as she can, even though she hates it when people underestimate her intelligence like this, "I have read about unbreakable vows before. I fail to understand, though, precisely  _how_  it is going to be used in this case."

Dawlish waves his wand and the stick figures vanish. "We're going to make him vow that he will work for the good guys and, if given a direct order by you, he'll have to obey. And he can't kill any of us. Also, if you die, the vow transfers to me, or whoever I choose."

"Will I have to be present for the ordering of him?" she asks.

"Course you will," is his gruff reply, "otherwise he won't have to obey but he still won't be able to betray us."

"So, essentially, I will have the power to order him to do anything and, if he doesn't do it, he'll die?"

"Yep."

"That's barbaric!" a hand flies to her chest in outrage and disgust. "What if I order him to do something impossible or—"

"You won't. You're too good for that. But I'll tell you right now, girl, if you let him go out of some crazed sense of compassion or misguided sense of humanity, you'll be responsible for more deaths than you can count."

"What do you mean?" she asks slowly.

"Malfoy didn't just kill his two cellmates, he also killed the Auror we sent in polyjuiced as you, and he killed one of the guards who was questioning him—"

"Torturing," corrects Hermione.

" _Questioning_ , Granger." Dawlish snarls back, "he killed a man who was just doing his job. His name was Wendle Crow. He had three dogs and a mum who is too gone in the head to remember he's dead all the time. He was just doing his job. And Malfoy wasn't even free when he did it. He was chained to a chair, but when the guard leaned near him to hear what he was whispering," Dawlish shakes his head, "Well, let's just say I know why he wanted those teeth."

She takes a few calming breaths because she still has questions and arguing with Dawlish is always counterproductive. "Alright, do you have a copy of the oath you want to make?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"May I see it?" She holds out a hand expectantly.

Dawlish looks like he wants to argue with her about this. He pulls a roll of parchment from the pocket of his robes. "Don't mention Addie to the others."

"I am going to assume that Addie is your wife. If you don't want her mentioned, maybe Malfoy is right and you shouldn't have told the guards."

He shrugs and doesn't hand over the parchment. "That's my problem, not yours. I just don't want word getting out. The only one around here who knows is Mallory, and I'd like to keep it that way."

Instead of asking why Mallory is the only one who knows, Hermione just says, "Fine," and Dawlish hands over the roll of parchment.

She unfurls it, and her eyes move rapidly across its surface. She grimaces. "This won't do at all. Too many loopholes. I'll rewrite it tonight."

Dawlish chews the inside of his cheek to think about this. "Alright," he finally says, "Owl me a copy when you finish. I'll be here to take you in for the meeting at four in the morning, alright? I want to have this finished and get you back here before anyone even notices you're gone. Fair?"

Hermione nods once. "Agreed."

"And wear something warm. This isn't going to be a Mediterranean holiday."

"Alright."

"Before I go, I'll want that memory."

"I'll go take care of that now," she says, and stands, already reciting the duplication spell to herself in her head. "I've got vials in my room."

Dawlish nods and leans back in his chair. For the first time, he looks as tired as Lupin always does, and his face is drawn in innumerable lines of worry. "I'll be waiting right here."

* * *

**Thursday, November 28th. 3:57 am.**

As early as promised, Dawlish arrives to take her to a different safe-house. It is a house she has never been to before, and when they apparate outside of it, she sees that it is small, much smaller than Andromeda's house and nestled among high, black-barked trees.

They crunch through deep snow to get to the front door, which Dawlish wrenches open with a grunt.

They step immediately into a small kitchen, and the only source of light is gray morning sunshine that streaks through filthy windows. Hermione knows it is a kitchen because there is an old-fashioned muggle stove in one corner and it is covered in rust. They stand and silently wait, stamping the snow off their boots. Hermione is thankful that Dawlish mentioned that she needed to dress for cold weather. She casts a warming charm as quietly as she can.

They aren't waiting long. There is the crack of apparition from the yard and then two guards tramp inside, snow falling from their thick, gray boots. They have between them the still form of Malfoy floating in the air. He is drenched in chains and unconscious, his head lolling to one side. They drop him unceremoniously to the floor and Hermione wonders if this ill-treatment is not to avenge the guard he murdered. His face is only inches from her boots and she sees now that the bruises on his face are gone and his nose is straight once again. He is still thin—much too thin—but he looks more like himself than he has since she found him in the woods. She can't see his hands, which are bound behind him, but she knows that if she looks at them, there will be perfect, pale nails on each finger. They've erased everything they've done like it never happened at all, and she wonders if this isn't its own kind of torture—to have nothing but memories to show what you've been through. There will be no battle scars for Malfoy. No proof even to himself what he endured.

She shudders.

"Wake him up," barks Dawlish, "he's got to do this willingly or it won't work."

One of the guards ennervates Malfoy, who opens his eyes like he's been awake the whole time, and he glances from side to side, his gaze finally tilting up at Hermione. She won't be the first to look away and so she stares challenge into his dull gray eyes.

"Malfoy," Dawlish spits the name like it tastes bad, "Will you make the unbreakable vow?"

"Who is on the other end?" he asks smoothly, although his voice sounds hoarse and strained. Like there had been a boot on his throat until not too long ago.

"I am," Hermione hears herself saying and Malfoy's gaze never wavers from hers.

He nods.

"Right, then. Granger, you've got to be the one to touch him." She looks up and Dawlish is holding his wand pointed at Malfoy like he can think of a hundred things he would rather be doing with it.

The chains around Malfoys wrists vanish with a wave of Dawlish's wand, and he turns slightly on his side to pull his hands out from under himself. Carefully, she steps around Malfoy's prone body and holds a hand out to him. She expects him to hesitate. She thinks he will slap her hand away and go for her throat. But he doesn't. His wrists are an angry red from the chains. His hand is cold as his palm slides against hers. His fingers, long and thin like a piano player's, engulf her hand so gently the touch is barely there at all. She would not have thought him capable of tenderness like this.

"Position, Granger."

She doesn't even glance back at Dawlish but squats down beside Malfoy. Even though she tries not to look at him while she speaks, she can feel his eyes on her and so she glares back at him in challenge.

"Malfoy," Dawlish snarls.

"I know what is expected of me," is the cool reply.

Dawlish scowls. "One wrong move, boy, and you're dead."

"Riveting, Dawlish," drawls Malfoy, "Compelling as always, I see."

"Go on, Granger," Dawlish gives her shoulder a small squeeze, "Last warning, Malfoy."

Malfoy doesn't even glance up at Dawlish and instead keeps his eyes on Hermione as she begins to speak. Her wand is clenched so tightly in her left fist that its base cuts into her palm. "Will you, Draco Malfoy, work exclusively for the Order of the Phoenix and its members, refrain from injuring or killing any order members or affiliates unnecessarily, obey all orders given by Dawlish or by myself, Hermione Granger, or other hitherto unmentioned third parties that can be added at a later time by either myself or by Dawlish?" She says it all in one breath. The words are practiced and precise.

Malfoy's long fingers tighten slightly around her fingers before he says, "I will."

Dawlish waves his wand between them, and a golden light shoots from its tip and wraps itself around Draco and Hermione's wrists, binding them together. The spell doesn't feel like anything around her hands, but the golden glow lights Malfoy's face, making him look more skeletal than usual.

As soon as the light is gone, Hermione drops Malfoy's hand unceremoniously. She stares at her wrist and feels inexplicably dirty, like she just did something that she wasn't supposed to do. She wonders what Harry would say if he knew what she has done. She misses him terribly.

"Right. Let's test the connection."

Hermione glances at Dawlish, unsure of how to proceed.

"Stand over there," Dawlish points to the farthest corner from the one where Malfoy is propped, "And just give him some order."

She clenches her fist and thinks hard about what she should tell Malfoy to do. "Clap your hands," she says hesitantly.

Malfoy claps his hands together once. Perfunctorily.

"Very good, Granger," and Dawlish sounds pleased with the results, even though Hermione thinks Malfoy would be just as likely to obey an order to make it seem like he has to, even if he doesn't.

"Right then," Dawlish turns back to the guards, "take Malfoy to the discussed location."

The guards nod, stun Malfoy, and vanish with a crack like a couple of whips.

"Where are they taking him?" Hermione asks Dawlish in the silence in the wake of their departure.

"We've got holding cells in a safe house where he'll stay until we need him. And don't look at me like that, Granger. Compared to Azkaban, this is like a stay in the Minister's quarters."

Dawlish apparates with her back to Andromeda's and leaves her there alone with her thoughts. 

* * *

That evening, Hermione is joined at the kitchen table by Ginny. Seamus, Dean, and Lavender, who are staying at Andromeda's for the weekend, wander in fifteen minutes later and Hermione finds herself surrounded by loud and happy voices for the first time in months.

They mostly talk about life at Hogwarts, because no one wants to talk about what is happening now, or the fact that Seamus, Dean, and Lavender are only here so that they can attend Williamson's funeral on Sunday morning. Ginny and Dean argue about quidditch loudly, and everyone sings the school song as loud as they can. Andromeda comes in and casts a scathing look around when she says, "Some of us are trying to sleep." and then swirls back out of the kitchen in a flurry of dressing gown and anger.

Hermione casts a silencing charm around the kitchen when she goes.

Lavender looks sour, like she wants to say something, but before she can, Ginny says quietly, "Just leave it, ok? Ted's been missing for a week now."

A hush falls over them for a long moment after that, but then Dean smiles to himself and says, "Do you remember the DA?"

Lavender and Dean share shy smiles when they think no one else is looking and Hermione laughs until her sides ache when Ginny does a very convincing impression of Seamus during their time in the DA when they were paired up to practice stunning spells. She is the happiest she has been in months, if not longer, and she is able to forget about everything that has gone wrong- the monstrous curse that might not be real and Malfoy and even the dull ache where Harry and Ron ought to be.


	11. Dinner and a Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for blood and secondary character death.

 

**Friday, November 29th. Morning.**

"Andromeda," she asks as she puts away breakfast dishes, "Can I borrow your Pensieve again?"

Andromeda sighs heavily, "I would say yes, but Dawlish borrowed it for business, and I don't know when I'll get it back. I shall inform you when it has been returned, if you'd like."

"Yes, please," she says, but she knows that the Pensieve will not be returned any time soon, if ever. 

* * *

**Thursday, December 5th. Evening.**

The next time she sees Malfoy, she isn't expecting it. He is standing between two Aurors she doesn't know and his hands are bound in front of him, but otherwise he looks unharmed. She doesn't like the relief that floods her at seeing him whole and in one piece. Both of the Aurors' wands are trained on him but if he notices, he doesn't care. They are here for the meeting, she knows, and they are early because they want to secure Malfoy at Andromeda's before anyone else arrives, just in case he decides to lash out. Ginny cranes her neck and stands on tiptoes to see him and sucks in her breath when she does.

They march him from the fireplace in the living room into the kitchen where the meeting will take place in ten minutes. Hermione and Ginny aren't invited, of course, as neither of them are allowed to fight still and even Ginny is starting to get annoyed at this.

"So he's the informant," she mutters darkly to Hermione. "Why do we trust anything he says?"

Before Hermione can answer, the fireplace roars into life again and they watch as Dawlish and Lupin step into the house, carefully wiping their feet on the mat to keep from stomping ash everywhere. Once they too have gone into the kitchen, Hermione waves her wand and the sooty footprints on the carpet vanish. This is how she and Ginny have managed to get even this close to the meeting—they volunteered to help Andromeda keep the carpets clean. Although it is a painfully dull task and degrading besides, they both do it so they can see who will be here, which will give them a good idea on who they should worry for in the coming days, and who they shouldn't be surprised to learn has died violently, cruelly, and at the hands of the enemy.

"Because we don't have a choice," Hermione replies once the door swings shut behind Lupin and Dawlish, "It's either we listen to him, or we stumble blindly through this war."

"Maybe that would be better," grumbles Ginny as the fire blazes green again, "At least then we'd know what we're getting ourselves into."

* * *

**Saturday, December 6th. Early evening.**

She is shaken awake by Ginny as the sun is going down and Ginny's red hair is framed by a red halo and it takes Hermione a groggy minute to realize everything looks vermillion because even Ginny's face is streaked with blood.

"Hermione," the younger witch hisses, "something went wrong. Dean and Marcia are in the kitchen and they're bleeding and mum's trying to do the best she can, but, oh god, please-please help."

Hermione is on her feet and Crookshanks is tumbling to the floor from where he was in her lap and she is sprinting to the kitchen like her feet are on fire.

There is so much blood on the floor it splashes as she crosses toward the prone figures. Impossibly, blood is still leaking from the two bodies in the middle of the ever-widening pool, although there are no visible wounds. The blood, instead, peppers the surfaces of their skin in thin rivulets, streaming unchecked from innumerable pores.

Hermione takes a shuddering breath in, draws her wand, and takes over for Molly in pouring blood replenishing potion after blood replenishing potion down their throats as Mrs. Weasley starts casting every counter curse and healing spell she knows. Ginny and Andromeda are smearing healing balms and dittany across all exposed skin, but nothing seems to work.

At 12:03 in the morning, they run out of blood replenishing potions.

Hermione holds Ginny until she cries herself to sleep that night before she even goes to shower all the blood off of herself. After her shower, her hair is puffy and she is still picking Dean's blood out from under her fingernails as she pads down the stairs into the kitchen.

Andromeda had long since finished cleaning the floors and someone else had removed the bodies. Now, two Aurors are sitting at the table, looking haunted over their empty shot glasses and half-finished bottle of Firewhiskey.

They ignore her as she fishes a mug out of the cupboard and taps her wand on the kettle to make it boil.

"I still don't like it," says one. She recognizes the speaker as April Marc, a middle-aged hitwitch who she's never really spoken with.

"We don't have to like it," replies the other, who is a young man with a strong Russian accent and dark blonde hair, "but he did what Dawlish asked and then he got out of our way, which is better than the last Niffler did."

"Yeah, well, he's smarter than the last one. Seems a bit daft in the head, though, doesn't he?"

"They all are. Have to be, to side with You-Know-Who, don't you think?"

Hermione dips the teabag into the mug and reaches for the honey.

"How long do you think he'll last?"

"You-Know-Who?"

"No, Malfoy."

The Russian wizard leans back in his chair and considers his drinking partner, his muscled arms folded across his chest. "Don't know. Could be days, could be weeks. Seemed happy to help, though, so maybe longer. Did Dawlish ever say where he was when we caught him?"

"No. Not that I know of, anyway."

"Do you think he came willingly, then? Maybe he switched sides himself and this is just to see how loyal he really is?"

Hermione takes her mug into the sitting room and leaves the witch and wizard to their speculation. She has reading to do and doesn't have time for half-baked theories about Malfoy.

* * *

**Sunday, December 15th. Afternoon.**

"Dawlish," she says when she sees him next, sitting at Andromeda's scrubbed table, "I need to talk to Malfoy."

She is still wearing black from Dean's funeral and she removes her traveling cloak, dusting the snow off of it as she goes to hang it on the hook by the back door. The funeral's reception had moved on to a pub down the way, where people were toasting to Dean's life, but Hermione couldn't get the image of his body soaked, skin sagging as it empties out of him, her own hands slipping against skin to help him up as he chokes, only to finally reach down his throat to pull the blood clot, long and slimy, out by hand. So she came back here to try to regain some sense of peace. Or, failing that, a calming draught. It's lucky that Dawlish is here, and she will use this opportunity.

He looks up from his big bowl of shepherd's pie just to make sure she is serious. "No you don't." Then he shoves another hefty spoonful into his mouth.

Her lips thin. "Yes, I do, actually. Lucius Malfoy has been using a new curse and I want to know if Malfoy—the one  _we_ have—knows anything about it."

"Why don't you just research it in your books?" He is speaking around a mouthful of food, his cheeks puffed out almost comically. He gestures with his spoon. "The ones you're always reading."

"I can't find anything about it in the books I have right now, Dawlish, and I can't get more because the Death Eaters still have the ministry." She enunciates clearly and wishes he would stop eating to talk to her. It's disgusting. She remembers the blood clot. She cannot look at the plate.

He considers her then, moves a mouthful of food from one cheek to the other while he thinks. "And you think Malfoy will know about it?"

She shrugs, "We don't have any other Death Eaters in custody who would be willing to help, and if it's an heirloom curse, Malfoy might know about it."

He leans back in his chair and looks long and hard at her. "Alright, Granger. I'll see what I can arrange."

* * *

**Monday, December 16th. Night.**

Sometimes she is so tired that she can hardly see straight. No one sleeps well anymore. Everyone is plagued with nightmares, and everyone wakes up tired.

That's another of those things they don't tell you about war: how bone tired you get and how bone tired you stay all the time.

She didn't used to dream, but now, sometimes, she does, and when she does dream, it is about dark rooms or her friends bleeding out, their wide panicked eyes begging her for help even as they spill over with unstoppable blood. Ginny has these nightmares, too. She doesn't say Harry's name in her sleep anymore because the time for good dreams has passed. Now she mumbles in her sleep and sometimes she screams, and when she screams, Hermione wakes her up, but she can never remember what it was she was dreaming about. Hermione envies that. When Hermione dreams, she always remembers what they were in the morning and she never wakes up before they are finished. 

* * *

**Tuesday, December 17th. Evening.**

Dawlish takes her to yet another safe house that she doesn't recognize and leaves her at a kitchen table. The kitchen door swings shut behind him and Hermione can hear the low rumble of male voices in the hallway. There is a crack of apparition, and Dawlish walks back in.

This is a muggle house converted for the purposes of wizards, and she knows this because of the microwave that hangs slightly off of its hinges and is being used as potion storage. The fluorescent lights above the table hum quietly and give her the beginnings of a headache. They flicker and dim from time to time as a power source (most likely magical) sputters. It isn't snowing here, wherever they are, and the house is completely silent, although she knows they cannot be alone. Safehouses are never completely empty these days. The Ministry has been coming out with anti-muggleborn decree after anti-muggleborn decree and with every new installment, more witches and wizards go into hiding or join up with the Aurors or the Order.

She suspects that this is an Order-run house because it lacks all of the finer things that Andromeda gets for her affiliation with the Aurors of the old Ministry. There is no bread on the counter, no half-empty bottles of Firewhiskey, and no parade of familiars around her ankles, although there are dirty dishes in the sink.

"Granger," and it is not Dawlish who says it.

Her head snaps up.

Malfoy is leaning against the doorway like he owns it, his arms folded against his chest. He isn't wearing his Azkaban uniform anymore. Someone must have returned Harry and Ron's clothing to him, because that is what he is wearing now—Ron's too-big shirt and Harry's too-tight pants and the moth-eaten socks she'd found under the bed—but he looks as comfortable in these articles of clothing than she has ever seen him look in anything. There is a thick chain around his neck and a thick-set wizard with angry eyes holding the other end of the leash. His wand is squarely in the center of Malfoy's back, but Malfoy pays no attention to him.

"Move, Malfoy," the surly wizard snarls.

As if the idea just occurred to him, Malfoy straightens, walks forward, and sits down at the table across from her. His hair is longer now—white-blonde fluff—and there is a thin shadow of stubble across his jaw. He looks tired and hungry, but more alive than she has hitherto seen him look.

Dawlish scowls as Malfoy sits. "Wait outside," he orders the guard, who removes the length of chain with a wave of his wand and steps back into the hallway, closing the door behind himself.

Dawlish casts a silencing charm and stands with his arms folded, staring stonily, his wand casually pointed at Malfoy under his arm. Hermione takes this as her signal to start.

"Hello, Malfoy," she says.

His eyes slide briefly out of focus and she wonders where his mind goes, because it is certainly not still with her at this kitchen table in this dimly lit once-muggle house.

"Malfoy," she says again, sharply this time, and his gaze snaps back to her. "I need to know what you know about a curse."

"How nice to see you too, Granger. I note that normal pleasantries are not lost on you." He sounds so cordial when he says it that it takes her a moment to realize that he is making fun of her.

Dawlish, who is standing with his arms crossed against his chest, continues to glower but says nothing.

"Good to see that you are as much an insufferable git as always, Malfoy," she returns evenly, "They've started using a new curse."

"Who has?"

"Don't play dumb."

"I guarantee the question is, in fact, relevant to the discussion at hand, Granger," his voice is smooth and dangerous. He is oil and a lit match.

"Rabastan Lestrange," she says and it is half-true. Rabastan did cast the curse once, but the main perpetrator was Lucius Malfoy. His curses hit Marcia and Dean, Rabastan's missed Ernie by half a foot. She doesn't know what information he'll give her if she mentions his father, though.

He considers this for a moment. "What will you give me in return if I help you?" his voice is smooth and light like he doesn't care one way or the other how she answers.

"Malfoy," growls Dawlish.

"I don't know Malfoy," she huffs, doing her best to ignore Dawlish. She suspects that Malfoy won't talk to him, or even talk to her if he inserts himself into the conversation too much. "What do you want?" She isn't really in any position to be bargaining. She knows she only even got this meeting because Dawlish thinks her work is important. It would be a compliment if it weren't so damn difficult.

"A discussion over dinner, like civilized witches and wizards."

"We don't have time to schedule a dinner, Malfoy."

"Perhaps tonight, then. Now seems fine to me, as it is only about half an hour until I am normally fed. Isn't that correct, Dawlish?"

She glances at Dawlish who nods, even though he is scowling.

Malfoy, who has also turned toward Dawlish and is awaiting a response, smirks. "Excellent. Then I shall await your return with something more palatable than your- what did you call them, Dawlish? Spaghetti-ohs?" He draws his face up in distaste like even the word is foul in his mouth.

Grumbling to himself, Dawlish points his wand at Malfoy, who amends quickly, "I am sure that Granger and I can continue our discussion in your absence, Dawlish, and I am sure that Hermione will have no qualms about hexing me into oblivion should the need arise." He gives her a conspiratorial wink that makes her stomach heave in revulsion. She has her wand out and on him without even thinking about it.

Dawlish still binds Malfoy to his chair before leaving with a snap of apparition.

"Now then, Granger," Malfoy leans forward against the ropes like they are comfortable, which she is sure that they are not. "where were we?"

"The curse is—"

"Not yet," he cuts in, "such serious conversation ought to be started and finished over dinner. For now, pleasantries."

If looks could kill, Malfoy would be dead already.

"Tell me how things are in your circle, Granger," he continues, "How is the Weasel? How is Potter? Still looking for that secret link to defeating The Dark Lord?"

She hates the way he says  _the Dark Lord_  like he is a god for worship. More than that, though, she hates the way he talks about Harry and Ron. Most of all, though, she hates that he seems to know that Harry is not around. "What are you talking about?" she answers, because she will be damned if she will tell the nasty Ferret any more than she has to about anything, least of all Harry.

"Oh, don't play dumb with me, Granger. It's beneath you. It's all that any of these ministry fools talk about: When the mighty Harry Potter comes back…" he rolls his eyes.

She glares at him.

"And how is your other friend, the tall one?"

The lights around them flicker and the microwave door slams shut.

Malfoy looks around with a crazed smile. "Doesn't like to be mentioned, I see."

A crack spiderwebs up the window with a sound like ice breaking.

"Malfoy," she says slowly, "stop it."

"How far will it go, Granger?" he asks her without looking at her. His smile is giddy now and he looks fully alive for the first time since she rescued him from the Death Eaters. "Will it kill us? Maim us? What is the fine line in the sand?"

 _BAM!_  something slams down on the table between them and it splinters, crumpling in the middle. She jumps back with a shout of surprise and topples her chair backward to the floor, but he remains where he is, bound to his chair, unable to run, and he is laughing. His eyes are wild now; there is nothing like humanity left in them and there is nothing but joy stretched across his face. Her chair is thrown back against the wall and shatters into tiny splinters and still he laughs.

"Stupefy!" she shouts and his head drops forward, the laugh still frozen on his lips. As soon as he is unconscious, she turns to the chair, points her shaking wand at it, and snaps " _Reparo!"_

She has just enough time to fix the table, seat herself at the table, and enervate Malfoy before Dawlish pops back onto the location. She is grateful for this. Whatever curse is upon her, it doesn't like being mentioned and she doesn't want to know what would happen if Dawlish were to come back to a ruined room. There would be questions and either Malfoy would be wrongly blamed, or she would have to risk telling the truth.

He stomps in wearing his signature scowl and glaring murder at the captive. He has a shopping bag clenched in one fist, which clanks with silverware when he places the half-eaten pie dish on the freshly repaired table.

Hermione still can't look at it.

"Why Dawlish," Malfoy's head lolls back lazily as he looks toward Dawlish, "Did you bring me shepherd's pie? Too kind. You really shouldn't have."

Dawlish unbinds Malfoy's hands and the three of them sit and eat. Malfoy listens politely as Hermione tells him about the curse. As soon as she's talking about how Dean died, though, she finds that she has no appetite and her portion of Shepherd's pie remains mostly untouched. She pushes it around her plate with her spoon until even that makes her queasy. She explains about the bleeding and she tells him about the flash of purple-blue light that the others reported before the curses found their marks. She glosses over the slow and agonizing deaths that followed, but with all the elegance of a dignitary, Malfoy holds up a hand to stop her.

"How slow, exactly, Granger?" he asks as calmly as if he is asking about the weather. He takes another small forkful of pie after he finishes speaking.

She gives him a revolted stare as an answer.

"I am asking, Granger," he says and sounds so completely sane that she hardly believes how insane he seemed less than an hour ago, "because I can think of three spells that can cause a person to bleed out and I would like the full and detailed story before I give erroneous advice."

"The first subject,"  _Marcia,_  Hermione remembers, and tries to push the scared and leaking face from her mind, "was treated for about two and a half hours before she succumbed to blood loss. The second subject lasted roughly five hours before he passed away."  _Because we tried so much harder to save him_ , Hermione thinks but doesn't say,  _because we poured all of the blood replenishing potions in the house down his throat and he just kept bleeding and bleeding anyway. Because Mrs. Weasley restarted his heart three times and because he was so afraid to die. Ginny held his hand, even though the blood leaking from under his nail beds was dripping down her arms and beading at her elbows. Because he was young. Because he deserved to live. Because we've known him for seven years._

Malfoy watches her with an intense curiosity like he is trying to read her mind in the planes of her face. "And the blood. Was it dark red or light red as it exited the body?"

She has to think about this for a moment. She remembers the blood as bright, stop-sign red, smeared across Andromeda's white tile floor, but then she remembers how much darker it was leaking out of Dean's pores, so dark that it was almost purple. So dark that it almost didn't look real.

"Dark red," she says finally.

He takes another bite of shepherd's pie while he considers this. He chews slowly, swallows, takes a long drink of water, licks his lips, and finally says, "Venticulo-scalpere."

She considers this for a moment. It is not a curse that she knows.

"Related to Sectumsempra," he continues as if he is explaining a basic transfiguration concept, "but much older. The precursor, in fact. Related, too, to arterio-scalpere, and much more closely. It's probably been modified, of course, since the blood flow would eventually cease on its own, given five hours. I trust you tried a coagulation charm?"

"Several," she replies and tries to staunch the memories. She tries not to think about her wand, slick with blood against Dean's temple. She tries not to think about his whimper of pain and how he began to claw at his scalp once the blood flow began to slow, how he began to convulse with his eyes rolled back in his head, the foam from his mouth and the slow, slug-like blood clot that eventually slithered out his ear, minutes after they realized that he was already dead.

He places his fork and spoon at the twelve o'clock position, turns to Dawlish and says, "Might I request a piece of parchment and a quill?"

Dawlish just glares up from his own plate, but Hermione reaches over into her bag and pulls a quill and a roll of parchment from its depths. She passes them wordlessly across to Malfoy, who pushes his dirty dishes to one side and begins to write. He is left-handed, she notices, which is something she never noticed before and he holds the quill with all of his fingers cramped towards the tip and his hand curved at an awkward angle. It isn't a particularly graceful gesture, but it is practiced and sure and when he turns the parchment back towards her, the handwriting is so elegant that she knows at once he was probably tutored in penmanship from a young age. Written in even lines and columns are a list of ingredients, and her eyes sweep quickly over the page.

"It's a modified blood replenishing potion," she says and looks up at him questioningly.

"Cleverest witch of our age," he says, and it almost sounds like an insult.

"Is this your invention, Malfoy?" she asks and tries to keep her voice light.

"No," he replies, "it is not."

"Then whose is it?"

"Does it really matter so much, Granger?" asks Dawlish gruffly.

"Yes," she snaps back, excitement causing her breath to come in short gasps, "Because if they aren't a Death Eater—"

"Then we can use this spell on them!" Dawlish is looking at her like he has never really seen her before in his life.

"Yes," she bites out. She is not in favor of torture, not even on Death Eaters, but two friends have now died in her arms and she is sick of war. She tries not to think about what sort of monster this makes her.

"It is known to the Death Eaters," supplies Malfoy and his expression is unreadable, "and the spell is difficult to master. Brew the potion first, and then begin to think offensively."


	12. Blood and Bile

Wednesday, December 18th.

She closes The Monster Book of Monsters with a sharp snap, leans back in her chair and sighs. Nothing about invisible creatures that stalk people. There is nothing in any of her old Defense Against the Dark Arts books, or any of the Standard Books of spells, either. She's even looked into taboos, but she cannot think of any way to explain the strange occurrences that have plagued her intermittently over the last few months. She tries to run her fingers through her hair, and she is still trying to disentangle them when Ginny walks into the kitchen.

"Good morning," Ginny says with a great yawn she doesn't bother trying to stifle. "How long have you been up?" She pulls a clean bowl off of the drying rack and heads toward the cupboard, looking for breakfast.

"Since yesterday," Hermione answers with another sigh as she finally extracts her hands. Maybe she should shower, or at least do something about her hair. They don't have much shampoo left in the house, so Hermione's hair looks like a rat's nest and Ginny's lies in greasy strings against her skull. Maybe she should leave the safehouse to restock on supplies since she is starting to doubt that the Order will pull through for them any time soon. That would probably entail getting permission from someone, though. She grimaces.

Ginny plops down at the other end of the table with a bowl of dry cereal and begins picking marshmallows out with her fingers, popping them into her mouth. "Wow. Was that meeting with Dawlish that bad yesterday?"

Hermione never mentioned to anyone that she was meeting Malfoy. This decision was a joint one between her and Dawlish. Dawlish thinks all meetings with Malfoy should be kept absolutely secret for security reasons. Hermione agreed because she knows if Ginny suspects that the potion currently brewing in their bedroom was prescribed by Draco Malfoy, she will never let it reach completion, and even if it did, she will never use it on anyone if she could help it.

"Yeah," Hermione says, "I'm just trying to figure something out."

Friday, December 20th

The potion takes three days to brew, but finally, it is done. It smells like blood and bile — metallic and acidic at once, and is utterly revolting. She hopes she won't have to use it, and she is afraid of what will happen if it doesn't work. She does not want to fight for a life for five more hours only to lose it in the end. She sleeps fitfully and dreams about Malfoy bleeding out, laughing and laughing the whole time.

Sunday, December 21st.

She sits at the kitchen table with Ginny, Mrs. Weasley, Andromeda, and Nan, the mediwitch. None of them are speaking because they know that today the Order is raiding another known Death Eater nest. The table is lined with blood replenishing potions and a cauldron full of Malfoy's potion, which Hermione has told everyone she found in a book. Mrs. Weasley's face is drawn in a grimace at the stench radiating off of it. Andromeda is subtly breathing through her mouth. Nan has actually cast a bubble head charm around her head. Hermione and Ginny don't even notice the smell anymore. For almost a week, it has soaked into their clothing and into their skin and hair. For almost a week, they haven't smelled anything else. In retrospect, Hermione thinks that maybe she should have brewed it somewhere besides their bedroom, but she didn't want to risk letting something go wrong or giving anyone the chance to tamper with it.

The bell above the sink jingles, signaling someone's arrival via portkey in the backyard. Wands drawn, Hermione and Andromeda edge the back door open, but Malfoy barges past them and into the house. It takes a moment for everyone to realize that he is supporting the oozing body of Ernie MacMillan. All wands are on him as he lays Ernie gently on the floor. Hermione takes a step toward him first, not taking her eyes or her wand off of him. "What did we eat the last time we met?" she asks.

"Pie," he replies. He closes his eyes for a moment, and she knows what he is looking for. This, more than his answer, proves who he is.

"It's him," she announces to the room, and as if the group of healers has been unfrozen by some spell, they fall upon Ernie at once. They tip a ladle full of the horrid smelling potion down his throat and he does his best to swallow, but he is barely conscious and his eyes are glazed over. Ginny massages his throat until he opens his mouth and it is empty.

Nothing happens and he continues to leak blood onto the white tile floor, just like Dean did.

Her eyes roll towards Draco, who is watching the events unfold like they are a boring television program and Hermione, quelling panic, shouts, "What are you doing just standing there? Help us!"

She doesn't yell it because it is Malfoy or because she thinks he'll be useful without a wand and half mad. She doesn't yell it because she wants to save him or help him or give him something to do. She doesn't yell it because she believes that he can be saved. She yells it because she has known Ernie since they were children and even though he is pompous and a bit of an idiot sometimes, he is bleeding out all over her hands and she wants someone, anyone, everyone to save him. To do something. To save this boy who was eleven and waiting in line for the Sorting Hat and who talked loudly about the DA even when he wasn't supposed to. She shouts it because Ernie needs help.

Hermione murmurs healing spells along the visible lines of his veins and arteries (because she can't tell which ones are bleeding through the thin film of blood coating his skin) on the right side of his body. Andromeda murmurs similar spells along his left side while Nan wipes away the blood ahead of Andromeda's wand. Molly mans the door for other arrivals and Ginny helps Ernie swallow more of the modified potion and blood replenishing potions alternately. Malfoy falls in beside Hermione, using a damp cloth to wipe blood away along his skin to clear a path for her wand, so she can trace the veins for her spells. She is too focused on helping Ernie to be surprised by this.

After about twenty-five minutes, they notice a gradual decrease in the blood leaking from his nose, ears, eyes, and mouth. After half of an hour, he turns on his side and vomits a partially-congealed blood clot onto the tile. After thirty-eight minutes, Hermione stops muttering spells. After forty minutes, Ernie smacks away the towel Malfoy has been using to wipe his face and murmurs a weak, "You're just spreading it around at this point," and Hermione laughs, more in relief than actual humor. After forty-three minutes, Andromeda scourgifies the floor and Nan levitates Ernie upstairs to rest. After forty-four minutes, three others are carried in, barely conscious and dripping blood, and it begins again.

It is long after midnight and the battle has been over for more than an hour, but they have only just sent the last of the injured to rest. Ginny and Hermione have each given up their beds and Mrs. Weasley has gone back to the Burrow. Nan and Andromeda are seeing to the six total patients upstairs and so Ginny, Hermione, and Malfoy are sitting at the table. They are all covered in blood. Ginny is picking it out from under the nails of her left hand with the nails of her right, her wand on the table in front of her. Hermione murmurs quiet scourgifies over her pants, one small patch of stained blue jean after another, and watching the blood fade into nothing. Malfoy stares at a patch on the wall behind Hermione and doesn't seem to notice anything else.

Hermione and Ginny take turns glancing warily up at Malfoy, but no one has made a move to bind him, mostly because he hasn't done anything more dangerous than wring a blood-soaked rag out in the sink and run water over it to get the worst of the stains out since he first showed up with Ernie. Even now he is just sitting in his chair, hypnotized by something neither of the witches can see, still covered in blood.

Andromeda wanders down the stairs and collapses in a seat at the head of the table. It seems to take all of her strength to hold her bones together, but her posture is as perfect as always, her graying blonde hair is swept back from her face in an elegant bun. Hermione wonders vaguely how she still manages to look so good when they are completely out of shampoo.

"I don't get it," Ginny says finally, once she has given up on cleaning her nails. She drops her head forward to rest on her arms which are folded on the table, her wand poking up toward her face. She is across from Malfoy. She is staring at him like he will attack her. Her eyes narrow like she wants him to, just so she'll have an excuse to hex him. "Why did you help?"

He continues staring at the wall like he hasn't heard her. Hermione recognizes the glazed look in his eyes. She knows what he sees. She doesn't turn around.

Ginny glances at the wall behind Hermione and when her eyes register only empty space, she turns back to Malfoy. "Oi!" she barks, raising her head slightly.

Under the table, Hermione nudges Malfoy's leg with her foot. His eyes drop slowly like he is bored. "I beg your pardon?" he asks mildly.

"Ginny asked why you stayed to help, Malfoy," Hermione repeats, loud and clear, her eyes wide with warning. Now is not the time to dislocate from reality or to point out the existence of invisible monsters.

He stares at her, his eyes unfocused. "I was asked," he replies, and he directs his answer to Hermione although he doesn't look at her, not really. His eyes remain unfocused, his mouth a thin neutral line. "When one is asked, one must comply."

"So you only stayed because we forced you into it, is that it?" Ginny's chin juts forward aggressively.

"I think," says Hermione, trying to diffuse a fight before it becomes unstoppable. "That he only means that we asked for his help, so he helped us."

Ginny is sitting up, though, and her bright eyes flash dangerously. "But it doesn't make sense! He's a Death Eater! He's one of them!"

"That is an erroneous assumption," says Malfoy and he sounds vague and far away. "Not based in fact." He unclasps his hands, raising his right hand like a conductor before an orchestra. Ginny is on her feet and her wand is trained over Malfoy's heart. Hermione is on her feet now, too, her hands raised to Ginny. "No," she says before she can stop herself, "It's not—" but she bites off the end of the sentence. Not what? Not what Ginny thinks? But Hermione has no proof of that, and she isn't sure that she believes it herself.

"Are you defending him?" Ginny chokes out. "After everything that he's done?"

"Ginny, relax. He hasn't done anything recently. He saved Hannah and Luna and as far as we know—"

Malfoy is still seated, looking up at Ginny's wand and Hermione's empty hands with vague interest. His right hand finds the left sleeve of Ron's shirt, which he is still wearing. He pulls the hem back, over his elbow and turns his arm up into the light.

"Hermione, he is a Death Eater! He—"

"Ta-dah," Malfoy says smoothly.

Even Ginny falls silent to gawk. The patch of skin on his left forearm, where the brand should be, is recessed skin, like some great beast had bitten off a chunk of it and taken the dark mark with it. It is pale and shining and very clearly without a dark mark. Hermione glances up at Andromeda just in time to see the older witch school her face carefully into a neutral expression.

They stare at the scar for so long that Malfoy goes back to watching the wall.

"Thank you, at any rate," says Andromeda eventually, inclining her head towards Malfoy. "We would have lost some good people today if not for your help tonight. We would have been lost without the extra pair of helping hands. We are very grateful."

Ginny nods, sullenly, and slumps back into her seat. She still doesn't take her eyes off of the scar. They lapse back into silence. Ginny resumes picking the blood from under her nails and Hermione watches her.

There is a snap of apparition in the backyard and the bell above the back door chimes happily. Hermione is on her feet, her wand is in her hand, her chair is toppling backward and she is moving towards the door just as Dawlish bursts into the room. "Granger, Malfoy's pulled a runner! You have to—"

"He's here, John," says Andromeda, lowering her own wand and raising a placating hand. She takes a step back toward the table. "He brought Ernie MacMillan to us when he was gravely injured and then he stayed and helped tend the wounded all night. He has attacked no one and he has gone nowhere."

Dawlish falls silent and his eyes travel around the room, alighting first on Ginny, who is asleep facedown on the table, her wand still in her hand, to Malfoy, who is looking at Dawlish with detached interest, to Andromeda, standing between the door and the table, her wand held loosely at her side, and finally to Hermione, who gives Dawlish a smug look even as she forces her heart to slow and her shaking hands to still. She takes a step back toward the table and tries to adopt some of Malfoy's and Andromeda's nonchalance as she collapses back into her chair.

"And none of you thought to inform me of his location?" Dawlish growls eventually.

Andromeda shrugs. "We've been busy. It must have slipped our minds."

Dawlish glares between her and Hermione like he cannot believe how stupid they have been. "No one died, John," adds Andromeda, "and we have Malfoy to thank for that."

The young man in question does not register what he has heard. As far as Hermione can tell, he doesn't even know what is happening. She kicks him in the shin again, and he looks up at her, meeting her gaze steadily. His gray eyes are bright and alive. He recognizes her without insanity clouding his vision for the first time since she found him in the woods. Her mouth is suddenly dry. Her fingers wrap tighter around her wand.

"Right, well, he can't just stay here." Dawlish points his wand at Malfoy. "Stupefy!" he yells. There is a flash of red light and Malfoy falls forward, his face hitting the table with such a resounding smack that Ginny wakes with a startled yelp.

"Now, John," Andromeda looks disapprovingly at Malfoy's unconscious body. "I don't think that was really necessary, do you?"

Dawlish turns, spitting mad, to Andromeda, "This...this thing has murdered three people in cold blood since coming into custody! Three of our people! I'm not even including other Death could have killed you, too! He could have killed everyone in this bleeding house before you even realized it was happening! People like him, they don't think twice about killing people like you, Andromeda. People like all of us. Think about that the next time you decide to set the prisoner down for a cuppa after a long day's work!" He grabs the fabric of Malfoy's shirt so harshly that Hermione can hear it tear, and then disapparates.

Nan rounds the corner. She is wearing a dressing gown and her mousy brown hair is pulled back in a thick braid. "What's going on?" she asks blearily. "I heard shouting."

Sunday, December 22nd. Morning.

She wakes up, looks at the snow just starting to fall outside, and then it hits her like a bullet—

Christmas is in three days.

And she's only gotten gifts for two people. Neither of whom is even here to receive them.

She chokes down that thought and heads to the bathroom for a shower, since the water wakes her up even though they're even out of soap now. She scourgifies her hair before she steps into the hot water, because this is better than nothing, even though her hair is a dry and frizzy mess afterward. The water is almost too hot to stand and she lets out a long sigh as the muscles in her back loosen under the pounding water.

This is going to be the first Christmas where she isn't going to get anything from her parents.

Hermione has never thought of herself as a particularly material girl, but this knowledge stings. She bites her lip and if there are tears running down her face, the water washes them away fast enough that she can deny they exist. Her parents don't remember her, and so, of course, they won't remember to get her a gift. She knew this was going to happen— she was and remains logical enough to reason out everything that erasing their memories would mean. She anticipated this, but that doesn't keep her emotional response in check. She sniffles loudly and gets water up her nose. She wants this war to be done. She wants everything to be just like it was before all of this happened. She misses her mom. She misses her dad. She misses her friends.

She steps onto the tile floor of the bathroom she shares with Ginny and Ernie (since he's still here for treatment). She wipes the steam off the mirror and takes a long, hard look at herself. She's lost weight, as evidenced by the sharp curves of her collarbone and the ridges of her ribs. Her eyes are sunken and her skin is the yellow of old parchment. She doesn't know herself as she is now. This is all uncharted territory. Taking a deep breath, she pinches her cheeks to return some color to them. She needs to eat something. She needs to sleep better.

It's wrong and she knows it, but Hermione thinks that if she just tries hard enough, this war won't change her. She doesn't want to be forged by something so terrible, so she won't let it happen. She promises this to herself, even though she doubts it is a promise she can even keep.

Monday, December 23rd. Afternoon.

"No, Hermione, absolutely not." Lupin shakes his head and pushes her request back towards her.

There is a form for everything now, she realizes. So she's done her homework. She's filled out the Request for Leave to the best of her ability, and she's copied it onto three different forms, just in case they needed duplicates. Therefore, she is a bit annoyed and nonplussed at Lupin's flat-out refusal to grant it. He hardly even looked at it. "Why not?"

"We're spread too thin as it is," he rubs a hand over his face. The full moon is approaching and so he looks even worse than usual. There is stubble along the edge of his face. "And you're requesting a trip to Diagon Alley, which is arguably one of the worst places you could go, outside of St. Mungo's or the Ministry, of course."

"I'm perfectly capable of—"

"I know, Hermione. I know you can take care of yourself. That's why I need you here. At Andromeda's."

She folds her arms across her chest and lifts her chin. "They can get on without me for one day."

"It's not the one day I'm worried about. If it was just one day, I'd consider it, but it's almost suicidal to want to travel down Diagon Alley now, and I don't want to have to think about replacing you if you get injured, captured, or worse. No, Hermione," he says over her, even as she begins to defend her skills as a fighter. "My answer is final. Permission not granted."

"Fine," she says curtly. She doesn't want to seem rude, but she isn't too happy with this, either. "Professor," she adds with as much venom as she can muster.

When Lupin leaves that evening, she does not see him off.

Tuesday, December 24th. Afternoon.

Ginny walks into their room and finds Hermione surrounded on all sides by belongings—paintings and a rolled-up tent and a years' worth of bottled water and food and first aid kits and potion supplies and innumerable books all stacked and piled neatly around her.

Naturally, Ginny is trapped in the doorway. "What are you doing?" she asks. "Do I even want to know?"

"I'm looking for something," replies Hermione as she sticks her arm back into the bag, her tongue stuck between her teeth in concentration.

"Are those Ron's underpants?" Ginny asks with a laugh as Hermione pulls a cloth checkered item out of the bag.

"I think so," she holds the boxers out and looks at the tag, which has Charlie Weasley sewn into it. "Yes. They are." She folds them neatly and stacks them with the rest of Ron's clothes. She tries not to think about where Ron might be right now.

Ginny cackles almost wickedly to herself and picks her way through the piles toward Hermione's bed, which she clambers onto with more grace than Hermione herself had demonstrated when setting up the piles. "What are you looking for?" she asks, looking curiously at the bag.

"Knitting supplies," Hermione grunts. She pulls out a hefty down jacket.

"Why don't you just try summoning them?" Ginny replies.

"I tried," Hermione doesn't even look up. "I think they're caught on something, and I don't want to break whatever it is."

"Here," Ginny rolls the sleeve of her jumper up and around her elbow. "Let me help."

They take turns digging their arms into the bag for the rest of the afternoon, laughing when they pull out something silly. Ginny grows quiet whenever they pull out something of Harry's— a threadbare jumper, a rumpled Hogwarts tie, his old sneakoscope— and Hermione pretends not to notice. Instead, she fills the silence with idle chatter as best as she can, which isn't very good, but it is good enough because Ginny smiles sincerely when she is amused by something Hermione says and forces a smile even when she isn't.

Wednesday, December 25th. Morning.

Hermione transfigures a feather duster into an evergreen tree so big that it brushes the ceiling in the living room and she, Ginny, and Ernie dress the tree with whatever they can transfigure or charm. Hermione adds golden tinsel and crystalline baubles. Ginny adds innumerable small golden bells and Ernie tries several charms that don't work. He lost his wand in the last battle and the replacement belongs to a different (dead) Auror, and it still isn't working properly for him. Olivander has been missing for months, presumed dead, and there isn't anyone else who can make a wand remotely as well.

At noon, Hermione and Ginny set off for dinner at the Burrow. Ernie, Andromeda, Nan, and two Aurors walk them out into the backyard, crunching through the still-falling snow and waving them off as they turn, each burdened with wrapped parcels, and disapparate.


	13. The Crucifixion of the Minister

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for gore, spiders (and cruelty to the spider), and secondary character death.

**Wednesday, December 25** **th** **. Continued.**

The Weasley kitchen is alive with guests. Bill and Fleur are standing in the kitchen, talking animatedly with Molly and Arthur. In the living room, George and Angelina stand very close together while Angelina nods along with whatever Percy is saying. Charlie, who is standing beside Percy, is looking at where Remus, Tonks, and a witch Hermione doesn't know are talking to a man in a garishly yellow and green sweater. It is only when he turns toward her does Hermione realize that it is Dawlish. He excuses himself and trundles over to where Hermione is standing by the fireplace.

"Happy Christmas, Granger," he says.

"Happy Christmas," she returns. "I didn't expect to see you here," she can't keep herself from saying.

He nods vaguely in agreement. "Addie and Sam are having a lie-down. I just popped in to drop off some holiday cheer." He gestures with his glass to a table. There are three bottles of dark wine sitting on it.

Hermione raises her eyebrows. "It must have been difficult finding those," she says as lightly as she can. She doesn't come right out and say what she suspects — that there are stockpiles of goods reserved for Important People.

Dawlish just shrugs. "I've been making my own wine for years now. They get three bottles every Christmas. Well, I used to give Arthur a whole case, but times have changed." He gives her a look that says 'what can you do?'

Hermione, slightly ashamed of her own assumption, tries again. "Did Molly make you that sweater?"

Dawlish looks down like he has forgotten what he is wearing. "Oh, no. This was from Addie—my wife—a few years back. Nice, isn't it?"

She is saved from having to lie when Tonks waves Dawlish back over and from the roundness of her stomach, Hermione realizes with a start that Tonks is  _very_ pregnant now. How long has it been since she saw her last?

Molly calls Hermione into the kitchen to help prepare for dinner.

Molly Weasley is all trembling hands and wet eyes. Ginny is on her other side, making conversation as though nothing is wrong—as though this isn't the first Christmas without Fred and Ron. This is also the first Christmas that Hermione is spending at the Borrow and, in the most supreme of ironies, Harry and Ron aren't even here. She misses her parents and hopes bitterly that they are having a nice, summery Christmas in Australia, just the two of them, without the daughter that they don't remember having.

Ginny gives her a pleading look so she forces a smile. "What can I do to help, Molly?" she says with all the cheer she can muster. "You've got quite a crowd this year! I can't wait to see what you're making!"

* * *

The talk in the other room dies down and someone silences the radio. Hermione finishes cutting her pile of potatoes before she wanders over to crane her neck to see above Molly and Ginny, looking curiously into the living room.

Gawain Robards' head is floating in the fireplace, and Dawlish and Lupin look angrily between each other. Almost as soon as Hermione enters, Robards' head disappears and action erupts in the little room.

When Hermione grabs the front of Ginny's jumper, the other girl finally tells Hermione what Robards said. "Kingsley's body has been found. They left him at the Ministry."

Then Hermione is pushing toward the fireplace. Bill has already disappeared into the roaring green flames and Fleur is close on his heels. Dawlish tries to push past her, too, but she grabs the crook of his arm. "I'm coming too," she says.

"Hermione, stay here," Lupin begins, but Hermione snarls, actually audibly snarls, in response. She is sick of being left behind. Her friends aren't here anymore. She is not a risk for Harry or Ron. There is no reason to stop her now, and she will not be stopped. Not by Lupin, not by anyone. An ornament falls off of the tree and shatters on the floor.

Dawlish raises his hand and says angrily, "No, Remus. She watched him get taken. She's earned this."

Lupin looks like he wants to argue, but instead, he just nods and disappears into the fire.

Dawlish offers her a handful of floo powder. "Stay close to me, girl," he growls next to her ear. "Just in case there's trouble."

* * *

**11:42 pm**

Hermione is sitting at Andromeda's impeccably cleaned table. There is a glass of Firewhiskey between her hands and she is staring at the dark liquid as though it is trying to tell her something. Mallory is sitting across from her. Without any warning, Mallory slams her fist so hard into the table that the glasses tremble and Hermione jumps in her seat.

"I should kick his ass for bringing you there," she snarls.

Mallory has cried off all the usual makeup and Hermione notes the remarkable facial similarities between Mallory and her younger sister.

Hermione takes a deep breath and shakes her head. "I'm glad I was there." And she means it, although she isn't sure why.

Mallory, far from being mollified, seethes. "No. You're too young for that. There was nothing for you to do, no logical reason for you to be there."

"I was able to help identify the cause of death, Mallory," Hermione replies quietly. "It was good to be useful."

"Yeah, good on you for I.D.-ing the curse, but they would have gotten it eventually. A miracle you weren't sick when you saw him. No one should see something like that. Kingsley wouldn't have wanted it."

Hermione doesn't mention that she was, in fact, violently ill in the very closet where she and Malfoy hid as the werewolves dragged Kingsley away. She doesn't talk about the body, suspended upside down and splayed like an eagle, lashed to the hour and minute hands of the clock above the elevators. She doesn't tell Mallory about the minister's exposed, faintly beating heart, attached by ligaments and veins to the exposed ribs or how his exposed larynx rasped around the word "Death Eater" before he was finally granted the release of death. Hermione will always wonder how long Kingsley was trapped there, suspended between life and death, turned inside out in front of his own office before the patrol wizard found him. Hermione stares into her glass of amber liquor and doesn't say anything at all.

"Well, drink up," Mallory tops off Hermione's glass. "I'm only sharing this with you. I don't want to have to explain where I got it to the others."

Hermione smiles gratefully and takes a sip. It burns all the way down her throat and sits like warmth in her belly. It doesn't feel anything like happiness, but it's close enough for now.

"Oh, Ginny's spending the night with her family. Sorry. She sent an owl hours ago. Also, you've got gifts."

The tree they put up still stands in the corner, but Hermione feels like it was a century ago that they decorated it. There are four parcels under the tree.

"I'll open them tomorrow," she says with a shrug.

Mallory nods. "Understandable. By the way, the one in the gold paper is from me," she gestures toward a small gold box. "So you know who to thank when you unwrap your favorite new thing."

Hermione can't help but laugh at that.

Mallory smiles back at her. "Now then. Let's participate in the age-old Hogwarts tradition of getting shit-faced on Christmas." She tops off both glasses.

"I spent Christmas at Hogwarts several times and we never got shit-faced. Not once."

Mallory just rolls her eyes. "The more I learn about you Gryffindors, the happier I am to have been a Slytherin. Even the Hufflepuffs had more fun than you lot."

Hermione wrinkles her nose. "There is no house I would have rather-"

"TO HUFFLEPUFFS!" Mallory cuts in, raising her glass.

Hermione, who knows a diversion when it's tossed her way, replies. "This conversation isn't over. Through all of history, no house has produced as many-"

"Yes, yes, long live the gold and red. Mighty lions. Hottest founder. I have heard it all before. Now, are you going to join me in praising the ancient and most noble house of 'puff or are you going to leave me hanging?"

Hermione sighs deeply but raises her glass to clink softly against Mallory's. "To Hufflepuff."

* * *

Hermione dreams that night of a faceless monster with long-fingered hands peeling shining strips of meat off of Kingsley's body in long thin lines. Its face splits into a wide gash of a mouth and it tilts its head back as it lowers the pieces of the minister, one by one, into its cavernous jaws.

* * *

**Thursday, December 26th. Morning.**

When she wakes up, Hermione rolls onto her side and vomits off the edge of the bed until the muscles of her stomach clench but nothing else comes out.

Hermione stumbles down to the kitchen eventually in search of tea. There is a note waiting for her on the table: "Hermione — open your present!"

So she does, but only after pouring herself an enormous mug of dark tea. She starts with Mallory's gift in its small gold-wrapped box. The sound of the paper makes her head pound, but she works through the pain. And she is very glad that she does. Inside the package is a pocket-sized case with the words "Brews for Busy Witches." It contains small bottles of pepper-up, Sleekeazy's, and even a contraceptive potion. This last one makes Hermione blush even though the only set of eyes watching her belong to Crookshanks, who is currently engaged in assiduously cleaning his front left paw. It isn't enough pepper-up to really make her day, but it is enough to fight off the monster of a hangover that is brewing behind her eyes, so she downs it in one gulp.

The second gift she opens is a sweater from Mrs. Weasley. It is red and emblazoned with a giant golden cat and Hermione pulls it on over her pajamas at once. It feels like home. She smiles to herself.

Ginny has given her a tin of cookies.

There is more one parcel. Upon closer inspection, Hermione realizes that it is a pillowcase that has been sewn shut. She does not know who it is from. A quick  _diffindo_  has it open and she dumps the contents onto the floor. It is a necklace, or at least, it appears to be one — a thin silver chain with an eight-point diamond star at its center. It's pretty, she supposes, but the charm is too large and gaudy for her taste and, more importantly, no one she knows would ever think to give her jewelry.

Using the pillowcase, she scoops the necklace up and knots the sack tightly, tapping it with her wand and murmuring a quick spell to ensure that no one unsuspecting will open it by accident. She'll need to look at it more closely, to test it for dark magic, but she doesn't know how much time she'll have before the Aurors or Ginny return, and she doesn't want a potential dark object just loose where it could hurt anyone. No, it will be best to deal with whatever this is in secret.

* * *

**Saturday, December 28** **th** **. Afternoon.**

She makes a delivery run to the burrow and when she enters, the people sitting around the table fall instantly silent, although they don't look happy. Two of them she knows, one she doesn't. She stomps the snow off of her boots onto the mat by the back door and looks over the small group.

"Hello, George, Ginny," she says, and she smiles at them.

George stares stonily back at her and Ginny attempts a small wave. The man whom she doesn't recognize folds his arms across his chest and grunts out, "Speak of the devil, hey?"

George glares at him across the scrubbed table and Hermione can see that his knuckles are white around his wand.

"Shove off, Liam," Ginny hisses.

"What is it?" Hermione asks lightly, even though there is a rage boiling inside of her. She doesn't know what she's done to make this fellow so angry at her, but it doesn't really matter. She's been cooped up for much too long to deal with this nonsense on her first trip out since Kingsley was... "Is there a problem?" She raises her nose into the air, cocks an eyebrow.

"No problem at all, Hermione," George says through thin lips. "Liam here was just trying to tell us a stupid—"

"Isn't stupid!" Liam barks back, tossing his dark hair out of his face. He points a thick finger at Hermione, "How'd she escape from all those death eaters? She was at the ministry when they took Kingsley. Did anyone ever figure out  _why_  she was there, Weasley? 'Cause from where I'm sitting, it's easy to see who the spy—"

 _BANG!_  Liam is thrown back across the room and into the cabinet, which collapses under his weight, raining dishes and broken glass down around his head.

George, Ginny, and Hermione all have their wands in their hands and pointed directly at him. When he doesn't move, George straightens first and lets out a short laugh. It isn't a laugh Hermione knows or would ever identify as his. It is a joke without a punchline. It is a gasp without a sneeze. It sounds incomplete and all three of them know it but none of them say it. Instead, George turns to Ginny and says, "what was that you hit him with?" He stows his wand in its holster on his wrist.

"Me?" Ginny looks confused and shakes her head. "I thought it was—"

Molly descends upon the kitchen with the fury of an old goddess. "Not inside my house," she hisses and there is so much venom in it that all three of the Gryffindors take a step away from her.

Her eyes slide over Hermione, and the bag she is still holding. "Give that to me, Hermione, dear, so glad to see you. You'll stay for dinner, won't you?" She gives Hermione a tight smile and then is all anger again, commands, "and you two—clean up this mess. And wake up Liam."

When Molly turns to leave, though, Hermione catches a smile on her face.

"That's the first he's laughed since Fred," Ginny tells her later, when it is just the two of them in her room while Molly gets dinner ready.

* * *

There is an owl waiting for her when she gets back to Andromeda's that evening. She unties the letter from the owl's legs and sends it on its way.

Granger,

Malfoy demands an audience before he will give us any more information. We've tried ordering him to tell the truth and he takes every opportunity to screw us over. We'll get more accurate answers if he just cooperates. I'll pick you up tomorrow at 9. We'll head to the funeral after.

Dawlish

* * *

**Sunday, December 29** **th** **. Morning.**

Dawlish is already in the kitchen, waiting for Hermione at 8:37 when she enters the busy kitchen. He looks like he hasn't slept or showered since Hermione saw him on Christmas, but at least the terrible sweater is gone, replaced again by his usual robes. As soon as she is in the room he stands up and unwraps a seashell.

"What is it today, Dawlish?" Mallory asks, pointing at the shell with her spoon.

"There was a time when you called me 'sir,' you know," he grumbles.

"Times have changed, Dawlish," Mallory crunches down on a heaping spoonful of dry cheerios. "I'm a grown-up now. I've got a wand and a badge and everything. I eat my cereal without any milk. I'm that hard."

Dawlish grumbles something about taking that badge away.

"I would give you every badge I've ever had for half a cup of milk. My kingdom for soggy cereal! Times are hard, Dawlish. Times are real hard." A thought occurs to her and she adds, "Would you rather I called you John?"

Dawlish prods the shell with his wand and mutters the activation spell. "Granger, are you ready to go?" The vein at his temple is throbbing.

"Johnny?" Mallory asks innocently.

Hermione fights down a smile and reaches forward. "It's a conch, today, right?"

Danish looks surprised for half a second and then nods.

"What was that, JJ?"

"A con- oh never mind. On three, Granger."

"Pick up some milk while you're out, JD!"

"One, two, three."

* * *

They land in snow so deep that Hermione can feel it leaking into her boots and soaking her socks. Even more falls in thick white flakes from a uniformly gray sky. All they can see is snow in every direction, bordered on either side by slipping hills. At the peak of the hill nearer to where they are standing is a house that sits like a black thumbprint against all the white snow and endless gray sky. It looks like a scene out of a black-and-white muggle movie, and it is God-damned cold. She casts a warming charm around herself before she follows after Dawlish, trudging towards the small dark cottage on the horizon.

They enter through the kitchen, stomping snow onto the scuffed wood floor. Dawlish closes the door behind them and, wand drawn, arms out-flung to trap Hermione behind himself, checks the corners of the room before he moves out of the doorway and lets her enter.

The room is larger than most kitchens in cottages like these, and although the shelves above the sink are bare, they look like they once held innumerable objects of great monetary worth. The majority of the room is dominated by a massive brick fireplace that stretches from floor to ceiling and one wall to another.

This place, Hermione realizes, is much larger than it has been charmed to appear. She wonders how many rooms there are beyond this one. Almost as an afterthought, there is a card table shoved into a corner that may have once been where a servant slept. From the size of the space, she imagines it was a house elf shelf.

There is a man sitting at the table who has dark eyes and a fur-lined cloak around his broad shoulders. His hair is ink black and curls gently around his ears. His wand is held loosely in his left hand, pointed casually at them. He looks bored, but Hermione doesn't think he is.

"Andrei," Dawlish greets. He doesn't put his wand down, either.

"You are early," Andrei voice rumbles like an avalanche and his accent has the same roughness that Viktor Krum's does, but a bit sharper. Not Bulgarian, but close. Romanian, maybe? Serbian?

Dawlish shrugs. "Is that going to be a problem for you?"

Without taking his eyes from Dawlish's face, Andrei reaches backward and bangs twice on a stretch of wall that melts away to reveal a door. Andrei speaks something in what Hermione believes could be Russian but might be something else. She can make out the word 'Malfoy' but nothing else. She makes a mental note to learn some Russian in her free time.

Hermione had read about the old wizarding castles of Eastern Europe — hidden to seem like nothing interesting even from the inside. Wizards and witches have been said to have escaped wars, espionage, and even death in strongholds like this one. Naturally, she wants to explore every inch of it. There isn't a chance for a tour because at that moment the door opens and Malfoy walks through.

His eyes are on hers and his stare is so intense that she feels as though all of the air has been sucked out of the room. His hair is longer now. It lays flat against his skull, as shockingly blond as it has always been. His face is less gaunt and there are no visible signs of damage on his skin, but still, he does not look away from her. He is watching her the way a cat watches an insect through a pane of glass. He looks hungry.

Dawlish steps in front of her, breaking the eye contact. "She's here, Malfoy," he snarls at the young wizard.

At his leisure, Malfoy says something in (what is probably) Russian to Andrei, who rises from his seat and says to Dawlish, "Come, I will give you a tour."

Dawlish turns to Hermione, and his face is pinched and he shoves something roughly into Hermione's hand. It is wrapped in cloth and it feels like it is roughly the shape and weight of a seashell. It's a portkey. "If he tries anything, get yourself out of here," he whispers, and then turns, straightens, and follows Andrei through the wooden door. It shuts behind them and melts back into stone.

And she is alone in the room with Draco Malfoy, who is not chained to anything or restrained in any way. Something must have happened in the last few months to allow Malfoy to have liberties like this. She clutches the wrapped shell tightly in one hand and her wand in the other.

Malfoy either doesn't notice this or, more likely, doesn't care. Instead, he walks around the card table and pulls a chair out, gesturing to it with one hand. "I was raised with manners. Please, have a seat," he says silkily, as imperious as any host.

Hermione gapes at him for a moment and eventually says, "I'll stand, thanks."

He cocks his head to one side as if he is puzzled by her refusal, but he does not press the subject. He leaves her chair pulled slightly from the table, as if in invitation, and goes around to the other side. He pulls a chair out again. For a crazy second, Hermione thinks that he is pulling out another chair for her, waiting for her to sit down again, but then the wood of the chair creaks as if under a great pressure, and in less than a heartbeat, it explodes into millions of splinters of wood as if blown apart from the inside.

His eyes glaze over when the chair explodes, like he is suddenly somewhere else again. She knows that look, has seen it on his face before, and she knows that if he remains like this for long, she won't learn anything new. So she clears her throat and says, "What do you want, Malfoy?"

After an instant, he gives his head a little shake and looks back at her. Without breaking eye contact, he reaches into the pocket of his robes and pulls out a great black spider, its body is as large as Malfoy's whole hands and its eight wriggling legs as thick as Hermione's wand. It crawls up Malfoy's forearm for a moment and he stares, transfixed by its motion. Tenderly, almost lovingly, he lowers it onto the card table. It explores the surface for a few moments before it freezes, its front legs poised above its body. Even from half the room away, Hermione can see a clear viscous liquid gleaming on its jaws.

"It's scared," she points out, and although it is staring at a seemingly empty corner, she thinks she knows what it is afraid of. Even invertebrates don't deserve this, although she doesn't know what to do to stop it.

"It's quite poisonous. Don't touch it. Don't watch, either." Malfoy replies, and he walks around the table, toward her, keeping his back to the corner.

She takes a step backward to better keep some distance between herself and Malfoy, although it isn't fear that drives the action. She does not think that he will harm her, although she does not know why this would be the case.

"What do you want, Malfoy?" she asks because she is sick of having more questions than answers.

"You are in need of rescuing, Granger," he says. His eyes are gray like the sky outside. Gray like tombstones. Gray like death.

"I'm not, Malfoy," she replies slowly. He is mad and she knows it. He is mad and so his words are riddles that don't have answers.

"Your friend is hungry, Mudblood," he says next, like he is talking about the weather. His eyes snap to the window behind her, and snap to the ceiling, and snap to the top of her head.

She bristles at the word. "Don't call me that, Malfoy," she snarls. Rage bubbles just under the surface of her skin these days. She is always angry and it is an anger born of doing nothing for much too long. She itches to act, and if this is the only way that she can fight this war, then this is what she will do. There is a slight popping sound in the corner, but she is too angry to pay attention. "I won't tell you again."

He smiles, though, like she just said something funny. "But it is what you are, Granger," he says, "it is as much your name as any other." He is watching her wand, which is still trained on his heart. He looks eager. Like he is waiting for her to hurt him.

He is provoking her. She wants to lash out and he wants it, too. Realizing that this is what he wants, she lowers her wand, although her hand is shaking with ill-suppressed rage. "I don't answer to that word, Malfoy," and then something else occurs to her. "You are acting very rude. Don't they teach pureblood brats like you how to host a guest? Where are your manners?"

Something slides in and out of focus on his face, and he sneers like the boy she used to know, like he is the same Malfoy that he used to be—the arrogant, pureblood brat of her memories—but then the expression drops away and his face is blank again. He turns and walks toward the table, pulls out the chair again, gestures to it with one hand again. "I was raised with manners. Please, have a seat."

She sighs heavily and resists the urge to roll her eyes. "I'll stand, thanks." She says for the second time.

"You are in need of rescuing, Granger," he says again.

She wants to scream at him that he already said that and he is as wrong now as he was the first time. Instead, she grips her wand a little tighter at her side and grinds out, "How so?"

"Your friend is hungry," he replies, and he smiles. "The minister was not enough. A prepared meal is not the same as a hunt. There must be death."

"What is it, Malfoy?" she asks because she has been able to find nothing on her own, no new information in any book.

His smile widens even further. His eyes are glassy now. "A friend. And he is hungry."

"So it's male?" She counters. A gendered monster is an interesting concept, as it attributes a biological concept to something that otherwise seems unnatural.

He cocks his head to one side. "You are in need of rescuing, Granger," he says for the third time.

She actually does roll her eyes at this. "And are you planning on saving me, Malfoy?" She can't help barking out a harsh laugh at the thought.

The smile drops from his face like a switch has flipped. He looks her up and down once, from head to toe, and then he turns away from her, gesturing grandly toward the table.

The spider is not on the table's surface anymore. It is pinned with a sliver of wood to the wall, upside down. Its legs are splayed and detached from its body, each pinned with a thin sliver of wood in a perfect pinwheel around its body. There is a splatter of shining blue liquid around, like a Rorschach test. Its cephalothorax is sliced open and she can see small organs twitching in the exposed cavity. It looks, she realizes, just like Kingsley's body. A morbid tribute to the crucifixion of the leader of the free wizarding world. Suddenly she can't look at it anymore, and so she looks at Malfoy, instead. He is looking at her like he can read the lines of her thoughts on her face.

"Yes," he replies.


End file.
